Tag Archives: David Petraeus

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama insisted on a crucial distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan, he said, is a war of necessity, while Iraq is a war of choice. In doing so, Obama, who had wrestled the anti-war Democrats away from his candidates like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, was being consistent with his positions following 9/11. He opposed the war in Iraq, but supported the decision to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Since taking office, his administration has acted on both two fronts. On Iraq, it has adopted a policy which will essentially remove American troops from a combat role over the next two years, gaining the support of Republicans in the process. In the case of Afghanistan, Obama opted to move 16,000 troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan to combat al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. That too obtained bipartisan support. Since then, conditions on the ground in Afghanistan have deteriorated significantly, to the point the administration is now divided on whether to send a major new influx of troops (in the vicinity of 40,000) to pursue the effort to keep the Taliban from recapturing power.