US’takes risk’ in Afghan war

Hürriyet Daily News with wires

"Afghanistan can become his war, just as Iraq has become Bush’s war," he said on Monday, speaking at a roundtable discussion organized by the Arı Movement, a think tank organization based in Istanbul.

Obama ordered 21,000 additional American troops to the country, mainly in the south, where the Marines recently launched a major anti-Taliban offensive. Schneider, who is currently CNN’s senior political analyst, also said Obama ran on one foreign policy platform: Iraq. "He [Obama] promised to end the war in Iraq," he said, adding that Afghanistan has also become a priority.

"He has taken a risk. Because no one knows how peace can be achieved in Afghanistan," he said. The U.S. has shown two patterns of foreign policy behaviors, according to Schneider. The United States was either confrontational or it withdrew from world politics. "The United States confronted fascism in the 1940s, the communists during the Cold War. George W. Bush extended it to the confrontation of the axis of evil," he said, adding that the United States withdrew into indifference during the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton. "The 1990s were a fantasy decade. No one threatened us," he said.