"We Won't Be Removing Ourselves From Afghanistan"

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post listened in on a press briefing by a top White House aide last night after the president's speech. It was enlightening about our true goals in Afghanistan:

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior White House aide said that the president's goal is for the "extended surge" in U.S. forces to bolster the Afghan government. U.S. troops could then start being withdrawn.

But that doesn't mean that everyone's coming home.

"We have a longer term effort at training the Afghan national security forces which will take our financial support and training support," the official said "And longer than that is the civilian effort."

Obama, the official said. "was quite clear that we have enduring interest in the region and we won't be repeating the mistakes of the past and removing ourselves politically, diplomatically or economically from Afghanistan or Pakistan. So the short term is the combat forces [withdrawing]. But we will remain engaged in other ways."

The pace of the military withdrawal remains unclear. The White House will take "conditions on the ground into account" as it moves "through that process of getting combat forces out," the official said.

"We haven't indicated a specific rate of withdrawal or a number of withdrawal," said the official. "But as [the president] indicated in the speech it should be very clear to the Afghans that it is our expectations that they will be in charge, that they will be moving to be in charge of security in their own country."

That's right. We intend Afghanistan to be our permanent ally (i.e. colony) in the region. And we'll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

We're not coming home.