 US commanders in Afghanistan say they need as many as 30,000 extra troops. | President Barack Obama says that sending additional troops to Afghanistan was due to ensuring that al Qaeda cannot attack the US homeland.
The young president defined the US mission in Afghanistan as "making sure al Qaeda cannot attack the US homeland and US interests and our allies. That's the number one priority."
Last month, the Obama administration agreed to deploy 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.
"You know I think it is the right thing to do. But it's a weighty decision because we actually had to make the decision prior to the completion of (the) strategic review that we were conducting," Obama told CBS on Sunday.
Following former president George W. Bush's policies in Afghanistan, Obama said that the mission was the same as when the US went into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Projecting violence against US citizens "is something that we cannot tolerate," the Democratic president noted.
His remarks came after former vice president Dick Cheney last week criticized Obama's decisions for closing the Guantanamo prison, saying that he is making the nation less safe through his reversal of certain Bush administration anti-terror policies.
"And now he is making some choices that in my mind will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack," said Cheney.
After the 9/11 attacks, Bush invaded mineral-rich Afghanistan to allegedly destroy al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Hundreds of thousands of civilian lives have been lost in the military adventure.
SOURCE
AGB/DT
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