President Barack H. Obama has vowed to fight the “Al Qaeda Cancer” by denying it a safe haven in Afghanistan. And, he has vowed to do so within a year of his 2010 troop increase.
Obama says:
[The new troops] will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight…And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.
Hopefully, the “conditions” for transfer of responsibility would include some form of political and socio-economic stability and security across the nation. As such Obama has barely 12-18 months to achieve this noble goal.
Unlike some of his other herculean goals, Obama has bitten off more than he can chew with Afghanistan. The country hasn’t had anything close to stability for 30 years now – since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Coalition troops haven’t even brought the nation close to stability during the 8 years since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban government.
What no one else has been able to achieve in 3 decades, Obama will surely do it in a year – just as he shut down Gitmo within a year and just as he had restored American prestige across the world.
