The Afghanistan War

quote:

---

President George W. Bush signs into law a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for attacking the United States on 9/11. This joint resolution will later be cited by the Bush administration as legal rationale for its decision to take sweeping measures to combat terrorism, from invading Afghanistan, to eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a court order, to standing up the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

---

quote:

---

New U.S. president Barack Obama announces plans to send seventeen thousand more troops to the war zone. Obama reaffirms campaign statements that Afghanistan is the more important U.S. front against terrorist forces. He says the United States will stick to a timetable to draw down most combat forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. As of January 2009 the Pentagon has thirty-seven thousand troops in Afghanistan, roughly divided between U.S. and NATO commands. Reinforcements focus on countering a “resurgent” Taliban and stemming the flow of foreign fighters over the Afghan-Pakistan border in the south. Speaking on the troop increase, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates describes the original mission in Afghanistan as “too broad” and calls for establishing limited goals such as preventing and limiting terrorist safe havens.

---