President Barack Obama is dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, accelerating a risky and expensive war buildup, even as he assures the nation that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011. The first new Marines will join the fight by Christmas.

The escalation — to be completed by next summer — is designed to reverse significant Taliban advances since Obama took office 10 months ago and to fast-track the training of Afghan soldiers and police toward the goal of hastening an eventual U.S. pullout. The size and speed of the troop increase will put a heavy strain on the military, which still maintains a force of more than 100,000 in Iraq and already has 68,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama's Tuesday evening speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., to be broadcast nationally, ends three months of exacting deliberations that won praise from supporters and criticism from opponents. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Obama was "dithering," too inexperienced to make a decision on the troop buildup requested in September by commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

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Senior officials said Obama would underscore his commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and scouring corruption out of the government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama has vowed to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

Most of the new forces will be combat troops. Military officials said the Army brigades most likely to be sent will come from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Marines, who will be the vanguard, will most likely come primarily from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

There will be about 5,000 dedicated trainers in the 30,000, showing the emphasis on preparing Afghans to take over their own security. And the president is making clear to his generals that all troops, even if designated as combat, must consider themselves trainers.

Announcing a start to a U.S. withdrawal by July 2011 does not tie the United States to an "end date" for the war, officials said. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because the speech had not been delivered.

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The address could become a defining moment of the Obama presidency, a political gamble that may weigh heavily on his chances for a second White House term. It represents the beginning of a sales job to restore support for the war effort among an American public grown increasingly pessimistic about success — and among some fellow Democrats in Congress wary of or even opposed to spending billions more dollars and putting tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers and Marines in harm's way.

A new survey by the Gallup organization, released Tuesday, showed only 35 percent of Americans now approve of Obama's handling of the war; 55 percent disapprove.

Even before the president spoke, his plan was met with skepticism in Congress, where Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and liberal House Democrats threatened to try to block funding for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs a military oversight panel, said he didn't think Democrats would yank funding for the troops or try to force Obama's hand to pull them out faster. But Democrats will be looking for ways to pay for the additional troops, he said, including a tax increase on the wealthy although that hike is already being eyed to pay for health care costs. Another possibility is imposing a small gasoline tax that would be phased out if gas prices go up, he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans said that setting a timetable for withdrawal would demonstrate weakness.

"The way that you win wars is to break the enemy's will, not to announce dates that you are leaving," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Obama's campaign rival in last year's presidential race.

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Barack Obama has begun one of the toughest sales jobs of his presidency, launching the much-awaited rollout of his new Afghan war strategy by informing top military and civilian advisers in Washington and Kabul and telephoning key allies around the globe.

Obama is outlining his decision to an increasingly skeptical U.S. public on Tuesday night in a nationally broadcast address from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. The strategy will include deploying thousands more American forces to Afghanistan, clarifying why the U.S. is fighting the war and laying out a path toward disengagement.

He first told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton his decision by phone on Sunday afternoon, and then informed other key administration advisers such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an early evening Oval Office meeting.

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It was at that time, said spokesman Robert Gibbs, that Obama's order for the military to go ahead with the new deployments became official. The goal of the president's revamped approach is to train Afghan security forces to eventually take over from the U.S., and Obama will say Tuesday that he doesn't intend to allow an open-ended U.S. commitment, the spokesman said.

Immediately after the Sunday session, the president called Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his top commander in Afghanistan, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. On Monday, Obama also began a series of calls to foreign leaders, starting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to be followed later in the day by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The leaders were getting an overview of the new policy, but not specific troop numbers, Gibbs said.

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The president plans to speak with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari before his speech, most likely Monday night, Gibbs added.

In Congress, Democrats already are setting tough conditions — if not outright opposition to a deeper U.S. involvement — and the American public is increasingly negative about the 8-year-old conflict that has become a serious drain on U.S. resources in a deeply troubled economic period. Casualties have increased sharply and are likely to grow more with the addition of more troops.

Congressional uneasiness or opposition was voiced Sunday by the leading Senate Democrat on military matters, who said any plan to significantly expand U.S. troop levels must show how those reinforcements will help increase the number of Afghan security forces.

Remarks by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, were a preview of the possible roadblocks as the president begins to sell a broader, more expensive battle plan for Afghanistan to an American public weary of the conflict.

Greater numbers of Afghan army and police are central to succeeding in the war, according to Levin, and more U.S. trainers and an infusion of battlefield gear will help meet that goal. But Levin said that it's not clear what role the tens of thousands of additional U.S. combat troops would play in that buildup, and he said Obama has to make a compelling case for it on Tuesday.

"The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge," Levin said. "We cannot, by ourselves, win (the) war."

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