CSPAN: President Obama- 'Announces Afghanistan Troop Reduction'

Source:CSPAN- President Barack H. Obama, addressing the nation on his Afghanistan policy.

"Speaking from the White House, President Obama announced that 10,000 American forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of this year and another 20,000 would be withdrawn by the end of next year." 

From CSPAN

I supported the War in Afghanistan originally back in October 2001 shortly after 9/11, because Afghanistan was harboring some of the terrorists that were responsible for 9/11. As well as Afghanistan being a safe harbor for other terrorist activities. And we needed to get those people to prevent other Terrorists Attacks on America in the future. 

I didn't agree with how we funded the War in Afghanistan from the beginning and now. Borrowing over a trillion dollars and putting all of that money on the national debt card. The War in Afghanistan represents around 10% of our national debt alone. Military operations is something America is very good at. Nation building, not so much. 

Just look at our country for example: we need some nation building of our own, we need to rebuild our infrastructure, our roads, bridges, buildings, airports, our waters, our schools. As well as building things that we don't currently have to reduce traffic congestion (for example) by building more roads. 

If you look at what the original mission in Afghanistan was, get the terrorists, knock the Taliban out of power and install another government thats no longer a threat to us. Mission accomplished, we accomplished that nine years ago. 

The question now is where do we go from here. If the mission is to establish a new republic in Afghanistan with a functioning central government thats responsible without corruption, we are not going to accomplish that. 

If occupying a country which is what we are doing in Afghanistan and making the case that we need to be there until they have a responsible central government, then we could make that case to occupy several of Afghanistan's neighbors, like Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan is going to have to decide what kind of country they are going to have going forward, we can't do that for them and be there indefinitely. 

At some point and by the end of 2011 I believe, we are going to have to decide whether Afghanistan can have a responsible central government going forward or not and how likely that is. If the answer is no which I believe it is, then we need to pull out and declare mission accomplished and declare we did all we could and accomplished what we originally set out. 

If the answer is yes, then we have to have a clear plan that everyone can understand and have a coalition behind us to help up accomplish that plan.