Analysis: 2 very different surge speeches

Analysis: 2 very different surge speeches
By Chuck Raasch - Gannett News Service
Posted : Wednesday Dec 2, 2009 19:19:31 EST

WASHINGTON — Two American presidents have given military “surge” speeches in less than three years, but neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush actually used the word in that context.

That’s one of the few similarities between Obama’s Tuesday night speech committing 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and Bush’s Jan. 10, 2007, speech committing 20,000 more to Iraq.

The goals are similar. Secure a country and beat back insurgents so a flailing and mistrusted post-war government can survive.

But the rhetoric could not be more different. The two surge speeches showed Bush, the unilateralist, and Obama, the multilateralist, throughout.

The differences begin with the end game. Obama laid out one on the calendar, July 2011. He barely took a breath between committing more troops and saying when he’d start bringing them home. Bush only vaguely talked about the end.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/gns_obama_speech_analysis_120209w/