Obama to Announce Troops to Afghanistan Not An Open Ended Commitment

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President Barack Obama meets Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia in the Oval Office to discuss a range of issues including Afghanistan and climate change. November 30, 2009(today NZ time). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

US President Barack Obama has today announced 34,000 troops will be sent to Afghanistan with the first deployment of new troops next month. Washington Post reports: tomorrow (Tuesday USA time), Obama is expected to make it clear to Americans, who are war-weary, that Afghanistan “is not an open ended commitment.”

Obama will address the nation in a speech at West Point at the United States Military Academy. The speech is scheduled to begin at 8:00 P.M. Eastern, and will be covered live on all of the major television news networks.

Other nations, including Australia, will also be asked to commit extra troops.  The announcement comes soon after Obama’s official tour of Asia, and in the same week he held meetings with Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Washington Post

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that President Barack Obama will make clear in his speech Tuesday that Afghanistan is not an open ended commitment….

The new deployments, along with 22,000 troops he authorized early this year, would bring the total U.S. force in Afghanistan to more than 100,000, more than half of which will have been sent to the war zone by Obama. The president also plans to ask NATO and other partners in an international coalition to contribute 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, officials said.

The combined U.S. and NATO deployments would nearly reach the 40,000 requested last summer by U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the coalition commander in Afghanistan, as part of an intensified counterinsurgency strategy. The new troops are to be sent in stages beginning in January, with options to delay or cancel deployments, depending on the performance of the Afghan government and other factors.

Associated Press/Washington Post

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama discussed the new U.S. policy for Afghanistan during an hourlong videoconference call Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the presidential palace said.

The videoconference came ahead of Obama’s planned speech Tuesday night at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he will outline a new U.S. war plan and dispatch between 30,000 and 35,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. Karzai’s office said the two leaders discussed in detail the security, political, military and economic aspects of the strategy.

The call was one of several Obama was making to world leaders, including Asif Ali Zardari, the president of neighboring Pakistan.