President announces decision in major speech at West Point

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday night that he will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, escalating the United States’ eight-year military operation in the region.

The soldiers will deploy in early 2010, bringing the total number of American soldiers in Afghanistan to approximately 100,000.

The speech ends weeks of speculation about the precise decision President Obama would reach regarding strategy in Afghanistan for 2010 and beyond. The President argued for the deployment’s representing “the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.”

Obama announced the increase in front of 4,000 cadets at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. His speech also outlined and defined objectives for what the White House is calling “a new way forward.”

The decision raises the likelihood that the war in Afghanistan will be as defining to the Obama presidency as the Iraq War was to the terms of President George W. Bush. Conscious of this and the gravity of the increase, the President used much of the speech to explain the urgent necessity he saw for the move.

“I do not make this decision lightly,” he said. “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat.

“This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards and al-Qaeda can operate with impunity,” he added. “We must keep the pressure on al-Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.”

The President also used the speech to clarify military strategy in Afghanistan, and said the United States’ “overarching goal” remains constant: “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.”

Obama explicitly listed three main objectives that will define achieving that goal.

“We must deny al-Qaeda a safe haven,” he said. “We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.”

The President said the newly-deploying troops will return home beginning in 18 months.

Saying that the price of two ongoing wars can no longer be ignored, Obama also said he will work to monitor and control the costs of the increase and the continued conflict. Funding the new approach in Afghanistan will cost $30 billion in 2010, he said.

At the start of the President’s term, 32,000 American troops were deployed in Afghanistan. Earlier in the year, Obama also approved a longstanding troop increase request, but Tuesday’s announced increase emerges from an entirely new strategic review.

Obama closed his half-hour speech with a direct address to the American people.

“America, we are passing through a time of great trial,” he said. “And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes.”