"Change has come"

[tetrusboy]

Barack Obama has won the Presidential Election 08 and is set to take office in January. How do you think this will affect the role of UK forces? His plan is to remove US combat forces from oversees within 16 months. Does this spell the end of middle east operations from a UK perspective?

I personally cannot envisage a removal of troops within 16 months but do believe that over the next 3 years there will be considerable downsizing of middle east operations.

What do you think?

 

[mike webb]

i watched the visiti he did to berlin. in this he talked about the overseas operations. your right, his idea is to cut down troop levels abroad, but my understanding is only in iraq. obama places great importance in success in afghanistan. he wishes to leave iraq, and fair play to him. but reductions here will lead to increases in afghanistan. i suppose we will follow a similar deployment pattern.

i think obama will be less aggressive than bush, but overall, who knows, theres a lot of issus floating about at the moment, lets not forget iran hasnt been sorted out yet....

mike

 

[dj1uk3]

I've got a good feeling about Obama, he seems to understand the average person. I think his campaign slogans containing phrases such as 'we need change' were so simple but were straight to the point, and most of all correct. The American people could'nt cope with another 4 years of similarity, they needed change and I think they will get it.

As for military operations I beleive it is mainly Iraq that will be involved with the removal of troops. Obama is still intent on hunting down Bin Laden and quite rightly so.

 

[tetrusboy]

In my opinion Iraq is done and dusted, but, history shows that a rapid withdrawal may allow the next "Hussein" to come to the fore and instigate a new dictatorship.