U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

Early in the 2008 presidential campaign, then Senator Barack Obama advocated increasing the level of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. On Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic fundamentalists based in that nation had carried out the deadliest terrorist attacks ever to take place on U.S. soil. Afghanistan's Taliban government an Islamic fundamentalist regime had long provided safe haven to the Al Qaeda terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden, who were widely believed to be behind the attacks.

Many critics have argued that the conflict in Iraq has taken the U.S. focus off the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, they argue, terrorists ...