President Obama will argue that the war in Afghanistan is still worth fighting — but that the U.S. commitment is not open-ended.
In a speech at West Point outlining his new war strategy Tuesday night, the president also will call for more international cooperation in Afghanistan, but is expected to brush lightly over how to pay for deploying at least 30,000 more troops to the conflict.
“There has to be a renewed emphasis on the training of Afghan national security forces,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a limited preview of the speech. “We aren’t going to be there forever and we can’t and we don’t have the resources, manpower or budget, to be primarily responsible for the security of Afghanistan.”
The administration so far has been noncommittal on a war tax proposed by Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, a onetime Democratic ally who has become increasingly critical of the war in Afghanistan.
Obey’s opposition underscores a major hurdle Obama faces from within his own party as he lays out a plan to add more troops to the war effort as part of a larger plan to end it.
Polls show that public opinion has soured on the eight-year-old war, which once enjoyed widespread support. Conservatives, many of whom strongly favor continuing the conflict, also are bracing for a letdown from the president.
“What I fear is that this is going to be couched more in terms of an exit plan than a victory plan,” said James Phillips, a foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation. “And unfortunately this speech will also be heard in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there is doubt about U.S. staying power.”
Obama has said in recent days he wants to “finish the job” in Afghanistan. The central objectives in the conflict remain dismantling extremist groups including al Qaeda and the Taliban, and returning control of the nation’s security back to Afghanistan.
“I think Americans have lost track of why we are there,” said Cindy Rugeley, a political scientist at Texas Tech University. “He is going to have to re-educate Americans about the war, explain what his objectives are and lay out his plan for getting out.”
Obama on Sunday night issued orders for his new strategy’s implementation. The decision, long in coming, weighed input from a war council that included Cabinet members, Pentagon and budget officials and diplomats.
The issue of how to pay for a costly new troop surge hovers grimly over the president’s new strategy. The cost of the war to date has been about $168 billion, or about $3.9 billion a month on average.
Julius Hobson, a professor at George Washington University who lectures on lobbying, said Obama’s approach may prove truly bipartisan in that neither Republicans or Democrats will claim victory.
“I think in the end he is going to be successful and he’ll get what he wants,” Hobson said. “It may be a case of neither side will like it.”
