OBAMA FOR USA
President Barack Obama will outline for the public tomorrow the cost of his new strategy in Afghanistan and the limits on U.S. involvement there, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.Obama last night ordered his military commanders to begin carrying out his plan, which he’ll announce in an address from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
“You will hear the president discuss clearly that this is not open-ended,” Gibbs said. “This is about what has to be done in order to ensure that the Afghans can assume the responsibility of securing their country.”
Obama has been informing U.S. allies of his plans; calls he placed today included ones to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He isn’t discussing troop levels with the other leaders, Gibbs said. Obama also plans to brief a group of U.S. lawmakers before his speech, scheduled for 8 p.m. New York time.
Obama is unveiling his strategy, which a U.S. official said will include deploying 30,000 to 35,000 additional American troops, as polls show public support for the war dropping.
On the ground in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are facing stiffer resistance from the Taliban. The president has said his main goal is to disable al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that have established havens in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Local Forces
Gibbs said the main U.S. objective is to train Afghan army and police forces so they can fight the insurgency and “so that we can then transfer that security responsibility appropriately back to the Afghans.â€
While Obama will “touch onâ€
Obama convened his top national security advisers last night to lay out his decision and give orders for carrying it out. Among those he discussed the plan with were Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, and National Security Adviser Jim Jones.
Obama also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, and the top commander on the ground, General Stanley McChrystal, by secure video conference, Gibbs said.
Orders Issued
“The president communicated his final decision on the strategy in the Oval Office and issued orders on the strategy’s implementation,” Gibbs said. Obama’s orders “are being acted upon by those whose job it is to implement them.”
Obama was briefing other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao. He met today at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
The U.K.’s Brown said today his country will add 500 more troops to Afghanistan, bringing to 10,000 the total number it has committed there. Brown spoke with Obama for 45 minutes in a video conference. They agreed on the importance of combining military and political strategies and asking other nations to share more of the burden, according to a statement from Brown’s office.
French Forces
Sarkozy said in Paris today that he will keep French soldiers in Afghanistan until the country is “pacified and sovereign.” France has 3,095 troops in Afghanistan, and Sarkozy didn’t say whether he would add to that force. He and Obama spoke for about 40 minutes, the French president’s office said.
Obama planned to speak with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari either later today or tomorrow, Gibbs said.
Before departing for his speech at West Point, Obama planned to brief about 31 lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, from the House and Senate, Gibbs said.
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that Obama “is in a moment in which he really has to regain the approval of the American people.”
“This is why this speech and the plan is so important,” he said on CNN.
Explaining to Congress
To help garner support, top administration officials will be heading to the Capitol. The Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to hear testimony Dec. 2 from Clinton, Gates and Mullen. McChrystal and Eikenberry will return from Afghanistan to speak to lawmakers, likely next week.
An issue getting increasing attention among congressional Democrats is the cost of the war effort. Democratic Representative David Obey of Wisconsin is among lawmakers backing a so-called war tax to help pay for the war.
White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan may cost $1 million annually. Orszag was among the president’s advisers at his final strategy session.
“The costs of our involvement in Afghanistan both in terms of our men and women in uniform, the health of the force and what this will mean” for the federal budget, have “been part of this discussion from the very beginning,” Gibbs said.
Defense Spending
The Defense Department has spent $168.1 billion on Afghan operations since the October 2001 invasion through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2009, according to figures released by the Pentagon today. That includes $47.3 billion spent in fiscal 2009 as the U.S. increased its troop level from 34,400 in January to about 68,000 now. That’s up from $32 billion spent in fiscal 2008.
The monthly costs averaged $3.9 billion in fiscal 2009, with a high of $10 billion in September, according to the Pentagon.
The non-partisan Congressional Research Service in a Sept. 28 report estimated that lawmakers have authorized about $227 billion in spending on Afghanistan since the war started. The CRS figure includes funding for such categories as civilian agencies and intelligence as well as military operations.
To contact the reporters on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net ; Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net
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