And to be fair his exact wording is “precipitous drawdown”.
Precipitous. Nice adjective. Meaning ‘Steep drop-off over an adge, or perpendicular 90 degree drop.’ Like falling off a cliff. So his choice of words impresses that leaving Afghanistan all at once would be like ‘falling off a cliff‘.
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Obama will not rush Afghan troop drawdown
OSLO (Reuters) – There will be no “precipitous drawdown” of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and U.S. troops could still be in the country for years to come, President Barack Obama said on Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091210/ts_nm/us_obama_afghanistan
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The antonym of precipitous would be GRADUAL. So a ‘gradual’ drawdown can take – in Obama’s own words- ‘years’. Taking a quick look back at recent history, this echos the infamous words of Senator John McCain concerning our occupation in the Middle East: ‘We [could be there] for 100 years’.
As stated in my previous blog entry, Obama is taking a surprisingly similar stance as his predecessor on the timeline for Iraq and Afghanistan.
I can think of another word for this:
STALLING.
Suicide Nation 