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Catholics hopeful, dejected by Obama plan to add troops in Afghanistan
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic groups with a stake in matters of war and peace were alternately hopeful and dejected by President Barack Obama's plan to add 30,000 troops to the war effort in Afghanistan. "I think he's making a tragic and horrible mistake," David Robinson, head of Pax Christi USA, said of Obama during a Dec. 2 telephone interview with Catholic News Service from Pax Christi headquarters in Erie, Pa. "The irony of him announcing this fateful escalation the week before (Obama accepts) the Nobel Peace Prize, this is Greek tragedy." Maryknoll Sister Mary Ellen Gallagher, who is on the staff of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns in Maryknoll, N.Y., said she hopes and prays that this strategy works. "But after eight years of this war, with the toll it takes on our own soldiers, the toll it takes on the people in Afghanistan, the lack of training in these eight years for the Afghani soldiers: Where have they been in all these eight years? Why have they not been trained to protect their own people? These are the questions that we have," she said. Obama outlined his war plans in a Dec. 1 address at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. Broadcast across the nation, Obama said he would add 30,000 soldiers to the effort, but also announced the withdrawal of troops beginning in July 2011 in the expectation that the Afghan government would be able to accept the added responsibility
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