Film-maker Michael Moore jabs Obama as new "war president" (Extra)

Dec 1, 2009, 18:42 GMT

Washington - Film-maker Michael Moore, who helped get out the vote for the Democratic president last year, says that Barack Obama will become the new 'war president' if he, as expected, announces an increase in troop numbers for Afghanistan later Tuesday.

'With just one speech ... you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics,' he wrote in an open letter on his website.

Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 helped turn the tide of public opinion against then president George W Bush and the Republican administration. He won an Oscar for best documentary in 2002 for Bowling for Columbine.

In the letter to Obama, Moore wrote that Obama's job was not to do 'what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government.'

Obama is expected to announce later Tuesday the deployment of at least 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan from the elite West Point Military Academy in New York state - short of General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 but still too many for war critics. The US already has 68,000 troops there.

Moore, also known for often colourful, off-the-cuff remarks, insisted that there were fewer than 100 al-Qaeda members left in Afghanistan. The idea of 100,000 troops 'trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves' indicated that Obama had drunk 'Bush's Kool- Aid,' he wrote.