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After many months of internal discussions, President Obama will lay out his Administration’s plan for the expansion of the Afghanistan war tonight in a major address to the nation. With an estimated additional 30,000 troops, the total US deployment in Afghanistan will be close to 100,000, in addition to about 45,000 NATO troops. In response to the war escalation activist film maker Michael Moore wrote Obama an open letter yesterday christening him “the new war president.” Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya opined in the Guardian newspaper that a troop escalation was “a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country.” In his speech tonight from the US military academy in West Point, New York, the President is also expected to announce in strong terms, conditions for winding down the war and turning over the country over to the central government. He will also discuss the training of Afghan military and police forces. But in a new article, investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter reveals that the evolving ethnic makeup of the Afghan National Army could mean the US is simply fueling a civil war.

GUEST: Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, writing for the Interpress Service

Read Gareth Porter’s article here: http://ipsnews.net/login.asp?redir=news.asp?idnews=49461

Tune in this evening at 5 pm to hear the President’s speech on the Afghanistan war live on KPFK.