Obama Afghan decision to come after Thanksgiving
AFP
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will wait until after Americans mark Thanksgiving on November 26 to announce whether or not he sends reinforcements to Afghanistan, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.
Asked whether Obama would wait until after next week's annual holiday to make his announcement, Gibbs said yes.
Obama has held a series of closed-door meetings with top advisers -- including his war General Stanley McChrystal, overall commander of more than 100,000 US and NATO troops already in the country -- to discuss the campaign in Afghanistan and how to achieve US goals there.
McChrystal wants up to 40,000 reinforcements, and has warned the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan could be lost if the president does not send more troops to fight resurgent Taliban militants.
But the White House has said Obama is weighing four different options.
The president, recently returned from a trip to Asia where he was dogged by strategy questions about the war, has been under sustained attack from Republican foes who charge the delay is putting the mission and the 68,000 currently-deployed US troops at risk.
On Friday top Republicans wrote to Obama expressing "deep concern" over his Afghanistan policy, saying it has left the country and allies "uncertain about (his) commitment to the war."
In a letter obtained by AFP, 14 lawmakers including House Minority Leader John Boehner said they fear Obama's long deliberations over sending more US troops into battle "has emboldened our enemies."
"We believe that it is long overdue for our military to be in the execution stage of the strategy instead of the evaluation phase," the lawmakers wrote.
Gibbs did not say when Obama might hold another meeting with his advisers, but the White House said earlier the president was expected to meet at least one more time with his war council.
The Obama administration has been openly grappling with the issue of Afghan leadership, and has conveyed to the corruption-tainted government of President Hamid Karzai, who was sworn in for a second term Thursday, that the US military presence must have a time limit.
In addition to contending with Karzai whose international credibility plunged after he won a fraud-marred election, Obama faces the growing unpopularity of the conflict back home.
According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, approval for Obama's Afghan policy has fallen sharply to 45 percent, and his presidential approval rating has slipped below 50 percent for the first time.
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Image: AFP/File/Mandel Ngan.