Obama’s Afghan Gamble
2009-8-19 21:2
And to Afghanistan, where U.S. President Barack Obama has a high stake in the election. It seems he’s making the war the biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency. Let's take a look.
Afghan police storm a bank building in Kabul in this amateur video, after three gunmen claiming to be Taliban exchanged fire with police, on the eve of the Afghan presidential elections.
This comes just a day after a suicide car bomber killed eight people and wounded more than 50 in the capital city, one of a string of attacks countrywide. Taliban militants have vowed to disrupt the elections, which begin at 7:00 a.m. local time on August 20th.
Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, who may face a runoff, is not the only leader with his future on the line. U.S. President Barack Obama, who has made the war the biggest foreign policy gamble of his own presidency — has a lot at stake.
Richard Parker of Harvard University.
[Richard Parker, Harvard University]:
“He is taking the risk of defeat. The risk is in a war, in a third world country where the opposition is deeply embedded in the culture, the risks of stalemate are enormous."
The Obama administration's response to the worst violence of the eight-year-old war has been a forceful U.S. military escalation, aimed at tipping the balance. About 30,000 additional U.S. troops have already arrived in Afghanistan this year, pushing the size of the Western force above 100,000 for the first time, including 62,000 Americans.
Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation.
[Lisa Curtis, Heritage Foundation]:
"The point is that we haven't seen the U.S. commit the kind of resources necessary to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan until just recently. So, I think we have to give the new strategy that's been spelled out by the Obama Administration, new U.S. troops that are going into Afghanistan, we have to give this a chance for this to work."
Curtis says for the U.S. — it is not so much about who wins the elections, as whether the elections themselves are legitimate, and to what degree they are safe.
[Lisa Curtis, Heritage Foundation]:
"Those elections are very important to U.S. policy towards Afghanistan, the U.S. cannot carry out the missions there unless it has a legitimate Afghan partner."
Afghanistan has ordered Western and domestic media to impose a blackout on coverage of violence during Thursday's polls, saying it did not want Afghans to be frightened away from voting.
