Missed Opportunities in the Oval Office

Lisa Curtis / August 31, 2010

Unfortunately, President Obama missed a valuable opportunity tonight to demonstrate that he is fully committed to success in Afghanistan. Instead he stubbornly reiterated his July 2011 withdrawal date.

Obama rightly said Americans should not lose sight of what is at stake in Afghanistan and that the U.S. must prevent the country from again becoming a terrorist safe haven. But his subsequent declarations that U.S. forces will only be in place for a limited time and that “wars cannot go on forever” revealed his impatience with the current counterinsurgency strategy and undermined everything else he said about the war in Afghanistan. (more…)