US President Barack Obama said he needed to see how fast Afghanistan could be stabilized and led toward a more democratic government before deciding whether more troops were needed.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Obama said the hardest thing he has had to do so far in his administration was to order 17,000 troops to Afghanistan on top of an estimated 38,000 that were already in the country. The interview was released on the Web on Saturday.
He did not rule out the possibility of sending more troops, while adding that such a decision was premature and that US military action was not the only answer to bringing stability to the region.
“We have to see our military action in the context of a broader effort to stabilize security in the country, allow national elections to take place in Afghanistan and then provide the space for the vital development work that’s needed so that a tolerant and open, democratically elected government is considered far more legitimate than a Taliban alternative,” Obama said.
“We are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops,” he said. “The military component is critical ... but it is not a sufficient element by itself.”
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