As friends and family members gather in Tampa Bay and across the country over the next few days to celebrate Christmas, how about a shout out to the approximately 48,000 men and women serving out country in Afghanistan? And how about considering what they're doing there today and when they'll be coming home?
President Obama has declared (and campaigned upon the fact) that he wants to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan a year from now, which the majority of the public agrees with. However, the president wants to leave a certain amount of troops in country after that date - something that didn't happen when we left Iraq two years ago. How many and what will their role be? That's something that Afghanistan's mercurial president - Hamid Karzai, hasn't yet figured out.
In fact Karzai has yet to give a commitment to the U.S. about an agreement post-2014. President Obama gave Karzai a hard deadline of December 31 of this year to come to an agreement to let a certain amount of troops stay there past 2014 - but Karzai appears to be in no hurry to come to an agreement in the next week, and now it appears as though that deadline will come and go without either government making a fuss about it - thus extending the negotiations.
Last month Karzai was hailing a pact to keep as many as 15,000 troops from the U.S., Turkey, United Arab Emirates and other countries in Afghanistan through 2024. That, however, was before that nation's loya jirga, a gathering of several thousand elders. It was in November that Karzai appeared to flabbergast many of those in attendance by saying he wasn't ready to sign anything just yet, and wanted to wait until elections in April.
The New York Times reports that U.S. officials are paranoid that the longer Karzai waits to decide, the better the odds are that the public will demand that all of our troops leave by 2014. In fact, if you believe public opinion polls, they already have.
In other news...St. Pete House Democrat Dwight Dudley wants a special session in the Florida Legislature on the flood insurance crisis. Also, have you heard of the open primary system that's called "Top Two"? It's actually the law in California and Washington state, and some Florida activists want to bring that system of voting down to the Sunshine State.
We're shutting down the Report for a few days, though since we're staying close to the ground here in Florida, if anything interesting happens before Friday we'll make sure to post it. Happy Holidays!