OBAMA: AFGHAN CONFLICT WILL BE REVIEWED--WASHINGTON POST

Obama Sees Troops As Buying Time, Not Turning Tide

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, January 13, 2009; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011203492.html?hpid=sec-nation

President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but the incoming administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like "surge" of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years.

Instead, Obama's national security team expects that the new deployments, which will nearly double the current U.S. force of 32,000 (alongside an equal number of non-U.S. NATO troops), will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called the "central front on terror."

With conditions on the ground worsening by nearly every yardstick last year -- including record levels of extremist attacks and U.S. casualties, and the expansion of the conflict across Pakistan and into India -- Obama's campaign pledge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan with more troops, money and diplomacy has encountered the daunting reality of a job that has barely begun.

Since the November election, Obama has been flooded with dire assessments of the war. A National Intelligence Estimate warned that a reconstituted al-Qaeda leadership, dug into the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border, continues to plan attacks against the United States and Europe.

The Bush White House delivered a major review of Afghanistan last month that echoed that judgment, acknowledged that a modern Afghan democracy -- stable and free of extremists -- may be both unattainable and unaffordable, and said that the United States may have to accept trade-offs among priorities.

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