Opinion: McCain calls for another troop surge, this one in Afghanistan

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Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who won his party’s presidential nomination despite his politically suicidal proposal years ago to increase the number of U.S. troops in the Iraq war, now thinks both the United States and its allies must bolster troop deployments in Afghanistan. (See video below.)

And he’ll make that recommendation to President-elect Barack Obama.

The loser in the Nov. 4 presidential election is on a long pre-holiday fact-finding trip to troubled areas of the Middle East and Near East that will end with his report to the incoming president and fellow members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including, for a few more weeks, Hillary Clinton, the nominee to be the new secretary of State.

McCain has said conditions in southern Afghanistan are in a stalemate between the allies and Taliban forces, but he added that the military situation in that country will likely worsen before it improves.

Obama, who opposed both the Iraq war and the later troop surge there, has, however, called for more troops in Afghanistan, but suggested they come from troop withdrawals from Iraq.

--Andrew Malcolm

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