Obama addressing the military servicemen at Naval air station
Florida : US president Barack Obama addressed the military servicemen and women saying that he will not hurry in the decision making of whether sending more tens and thousands of soldiers to afghanistan.
He addressed the following at naval air station in jackonsonville “I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this, and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan”.
He continued saying “I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way … I won’t risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary, and if it is necessary, we will back you up”. Obama is focussing on new military strategy in Afghanistan and is considering whether to agree to reports of senior commanders of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, which says that they need to have more 40,000 troops in order to fight Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Obama had promised the US nation that he would pull back US troops from Afghanistan and iraq within weeks of his presidentship and said that ‘War is not the answer for Afghan and Iraq’. But the issue is yet to recieve approval.
The White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that in coming weeks Barack Obama will give his decision regarding the strategy to be applied on further war issues.
Critics say that fake promises were made by the president and also accused him of taking too long to decide what he is going to do with the Afghanistan situation, whether he will go by the promise of pulling the troops out or will he continue the war like the former president.
Former US vice-president Dick Cheney said that Obama was “dithering” and “waffling” over strategy last week.
But US senator John Kerry, told to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington that “[McChrystal] understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area. But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast, We do not yet have the critical guarantees of governance and of development capacity, the other two legs of counter-insurgency”.
A senior reporter with of the Washington Independent said that Kerry has “a tremendous amount of prestige after brokering Hamid Karzai’s agreement to run in the runoff election”.
He has quite a great amount of sway – his call today was basically to do a version of McChrystal’s strategy, focusing on counter-insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan. He says he would only go for more American troops only if there are enough Afghan and US civilian capacity to build on the gains that the troops make”.
Soldiers in Afghanistan facing war
During his address Obama also paid tribute to 14 American killed in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan. He said “Our prayers are with these service members, their civilian colleagues and the families who loved them, While no words can ease the ache in their hearts today, may they find some comfort in knowing this: like all those who give their lives in service to America, they were doing their duty and they were doing this nation proud”.
Nato and US troops are suffering the highest fatality rates since the deployment of foreign troops to Afghanistan in 2001. So far in October, more than 30 US soldiers have died.