Obama's Afghanistan Speech

I'm not going to put up a transcript of Obama's speech, as it can be found by a simple google search for anyone interested. 

First, the general Obama plan is as follows: go in with 30,000 troops for 18 months and try to clean house and watch the Pakistan border as much as possible. Around this same time we'll have pulled most of our Iraq troops out as well.

One thing I noticed during the speech was how much Obama mentioned Pakistan about as much as he did Afghanistan. This tells me that it is an integral part in how Obama made this decision. I feel that if it weren't for Pakistan, Obama may not have added more troops into the region. He has carried out drone attack around the border in hopes of disturbing Al Qaeda cells, so the connection makes sense. 

However, I'm still not sold. Obama spoke inspirationally about the conflict and made me want to get behind him, but I'm not. Obama, like Bush and many others, has failed to convince me how our military presence in the region is going to somehow reduce the effectiveness of terrorist propaganda about us being an occupying enemy in the area. I also don't know how Obama is going to do the job in 18 months, unless he expects to return Afghanistan to what it was before we entered (corrupt guys running the joint with no terrorist influence), in which case I don't see it as much better. 

In the end, my doubts don't lie specifically with Obama per se, but rather with the whole notion of the War on Terror and our reasons for being there to begin with. Of course we were attacked on 9/11 and those organizations are still out there. However, they were formed and carried out based on beliefs with our interventions in their lands and our support of occupying people in the region (Israel). Why are we not looking at the attacks in context? Why do we simply react without being pensive about the entire ordeal? I guess that's the essence of America's tradition: view ourselves and act as if we live in a world where our actions have no consequences but others actions towards us hold deep consequences. 

I hope Obama proves me wrong. Really, I do. I'd like to think he's got a team running better logistics than that of the Bush Administration. That said, I don't think Obama's efforts are going to stand up for the long haul, nor do I believe that our conflicts in the region have anything to do with some sort of 'stabilisation effort' for peace and democracy. I can only watch, stay actively informed, and wait to see how I vote in the elections.