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Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan | Salon

Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan | Salon: "July 23, 2008 | Barack Obama's Afghanistan and Iraq policies are mirror images of each other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves with which he treated the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat to hit at al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls of outrage from Islamabad.

But Obama's pledge to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be easy to fulfill. While coalition troop deaths have declined significantly in Iraq, NATO casualties in Afghanistan are way up. By shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, would a President Obama be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

During the Baghdad stop of his ongoing overseas tour, the convergence between the worldview of the presumptive Democratic nominee and that of his Iraqi hosts provided some embarrassing moments for the Bush administration. Obama and his traveling companions, Senate colleagues Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., issued a statement Tuesday after a day of consultations with Iraqi politicians and U.S. military commanders, affirming the need to respect Iraqi aspirations for a 'timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat forces.' By then, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had already expressed support for Obama's proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration next January."

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