Obama seems unlikely to widen war in Afghanistan

By GottaLaff

I've gotten a few rather hostile comments over at my YouTube of President Obama's visit to Ben's Chili Bowl, of all places, suggesting that Obama is no better than Bush, because, see, he's a warmongering killer. It sure doesn't look that way from this report:

President Barack Obama, who pledged during his campaign to shift U.S. troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the grinding war against a resurgent Taliban.

On the contrary, Obama appears likely to streamline the U.S. focus with an eye to the worsening economy and the cautionary example of the Iraq war that sapped political support for President George W. Bush.

"There's not simply a military solution to that problem," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, adding that Obama believes "that only through long-term and sustainable development can we ever hope to turn around what's going on there." [...]

Obama said he wants to add troops to turn back the Taliban, but he has not gone beyond the approximately 30,000 additional forces already under consideration by the previous administration.

A just-completed classified Joint Chiefs of Staff assessment lowers expectations in the conflict in Afghanistan.

Instead, it suggests that key goals should be to make modest gains to stabilize the governance and to eliminate terrorist safe havens [...]

The Joint Chiefs review also stresses that the strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want and that the U.S. cannot impose its own goals on the Afghan government.

Army Gen. David Petraeus is not likely to recommend a "surge" there, either.