Obamas Speech

Obama's plan.

1. Overwhelm Taliban with the 30,000 extra troops that he is sending to Afghanistan to allow the formation of a strong Afghani military, and civil work in rural areas to be done. ie. wells plumbing sanitation

2. Stop sending Pakistan blank checks, and force them to help with the war against the Taliban.

3. Obama is also asking NATO to send in more troops to help aid the Americans.

4. Obama will create a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Pakistan.

Critizations.

Considering the circumstances the choices that the president has to make in this situation the one that he has chose is a good choice, however there are is one main event that should have been addressed.

1. Announcing a date for withdrawal is a very weak part of this plan. Once the date is announced the Taliban could very easily blend in with the rest of Afghanis until the date of withdrawal. Another part is if President Obama does create a time table, and the goals that he sets are not met by that time ie. Wells, construction for basic needs, and creating a Afghani force that will be able to battle the Taliban, then Obama will be forced to make a decision, to stick with his original time table, or to modify the time table based on the amount of time, and re-construction needed. In the words of Sen. John McCain "The way that you win wars is to break the enemy's will, not to announce the date that you are leaving." "

Problems in Afghanistan

Local US support-

-The United States does not have support from the local tribes. The reason for this is both resentment towards the United States, and the lack of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. When any local tribe helps the United States soldiers they tribe gets “punished” by the Taliban for helping. The Taliban have a much more convincing argument to get local support because the Taliban could kill anyone who helps the Americans. But on the other hand the Americans can not do anything to someone who supports the Taliban. This is why the Americans are not doing very well in getting support from the locals in Afghanistan. As an American soldier from bravo company stationed in the Korengal Valley has said “Nobody likes us, I don’t even think the little kids like us…” “… its like we take 1 step forward and 5 steps back.”

Taliban Revenue-

-The Taliban collects their revenue in many different ways, but some, like production of drugs, are more prominent than others. During the past few years the production of poppies, and in turn Heroine, Opium, and other opiates have been produced in much larger quantities in Afghanistan. The reason for this is revenue. After the Taliban had been “Pushed out of power” in 2001 the amount of poppy production went up dramatically.

Boarder crossing-

-One of the problems that US and NATO forces face in Afghanistan is the free crossing between the Afghanistan and Pakistani boarder. The Taliban has a safe haven for their operations in the Tribal areas across the boarder. The tribal areas in Pakistan are too “hot” for the Pakistani military to go into. On top of this the US forces could not go into Pakistan due to restrictions placed on them by the Pakistani Government. This is a big problem because it provides the Taliban an area for their base of operations.

Fear-

-The Taliban uses fear to keep the people in line. They use tactics such as beheadings, and public stoning to instill fear into the Afghani people. This is very hard for the US and NATO forces to combat, because they can not use fear to control. The options presented to the locals are help the US and get beheaded, or otherwise publicly humiliated, or don’t help the US and NATO forces and be left alone.