Afghanistan plan refocuses on al-Qaeda
— -- President Obama, pushing his new strategy to cope with the growing insurgency in Afghanistan, said Sunday he was prepared to go after terrorists hiding in neighboring Pakistan, but would not launch attacks without first consulting Pakistani authorities.
Obama also ruled out sending U.S. forces into Pakistan, a U.S. ally which long sponsored the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan and harbored al-Qaeda until it was overthrown by American forces in 2001.
"Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government," Obama said in an interview broadcast on CBS' Face the Nation.
The U.S. approach would give Pakistan the tools to root out al-Qaeda, Obama said. He called on Pakistan's leaders to be more accountable in countering the "steady creep of extremism" within their borders.
The interview was taped Friday after Obama announced plans to send 4,000 more troops and additional civilian aid workers to Afghanistan along with increased financial assistance to Pakistan.
Obama said the U.S. must move quickly to stem violence in Afghanistan because "unless we get a handle on it now, we're gonna be in trouble."
He said the nation had "lost" its focus on the war in Afghanistan over the last seven years under the Bush administration.
"What we want to do is refocus attention on al-Qaeda," he said.
The president and his top envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, also took pains to emphasize that the new strategy would not lead to what Obama called "an open-ended commitment of infinite resources" by the United States.
Holbrooke rejected comparisons between the stepped-up efforts in Afghanistan and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam decades ago. "The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese never posed any direct threat to the United States and its homeland," Holbrooke said on CNN's State of the Union.
"The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and the people they are sheltering in western Pakistan pose a direct threat," he said. "Those are the men of 9/11."
In other topics, Obama said:
• He would not speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, despite security gains there. "I think the plan we put forward … is the right one," he said. "Let's have a gradual withdrawal schedule through the national elections in Iraq."
The administration's plan, unveiled last month, would end the combat presence of U.S. troops in Iraq by August 2010.
• While public fury over the AIG bonuses was justified, he doesn't want to be distracted from his chief goal — improving the U.S. economy. Obama called on executives of financial institutions to demonstrate restraint.
"It's very difficult for me … to call on the American people to make sacrifices to help shore up the financial system if there's no sense of mutual obligation," he said.
• The administration is weighing sending more National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to combat drug violence.
Obama said he first wants to see whether ramped-up security measures are working. The U.S. has committed $1.4 billion to help Mexican authorities in their bloody war with the drug cartels.
Obama called the violence a "serious threat" to border communities and said the U.S. needs to decrease its demand for illegal drugs and restrict the flow of cash and guns to Mexico.