Speaking softly and somewhat haltingly, Obama said losses such as these are “something that I think about each and every day.’’
Asked whether the somber experience - watching cases carrying the remains come off a giant C-17 cargo plane one by one in the darkness and meeting privately with families so fresh in their grief - will affect his review of US strategy in Afghanistan, the president did not hesitate to say that it would. But he did not elaborate.
“The burden that both our troops and their families bear in any wartime situation is going to bear on how I see these conflicts,’’ he said, adding nothing more.
Obama made the trip to Dover at a pivotal moment of the Afghanistan war, which has become the dominant foreign policy challenge of his early presidency. He is weighing how to overhaul the war so that terrorists cannot take root again in Afghanistan, and more US lives and money are not sunk into an effort that doesn’t work. He has already dispatched 21,000 troops, increasing the number in Afghanistan to 68,000. Now, he is considering sending many more, though probably fewer than the 40,000 requested by his top commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, officials said.
A narrowed military mission would increase the number of American forces to accomplish the commander’s broadest goals, protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure. But the option’s scaled-down troop increase probably would cut back on McChrystal’s most ambitious objectives, amounting to what one official described as “McChrystal Light.’’
Obama holds his next war council meeting today with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but aides say he is still weeks - perhaps several - away from a decision. He is likely to hold off on making a decision until after Afghanistan’s presidential runoff election Nov. 7, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday in Pakistan.
The president apparently wanted to make his visit to Dover yesterday because of the enormous blow to US forces this week.
