President Barack Obama’s lightning trip to Afghanistan to address the nation about ending a war that has lasted longer than Veitnam, sign a long-term partnership pact with the Afghanistan government, and mark the the anniversary of Al Qaeda terrorism chief Osama bin Laden’s death with American troops could re-ignite Afghanistan as an issue on several fronts. The trip and news that the U.S. will formally have a long term relationship with Afghanistan that will involve keeping troops there is getting a mixed response. A way to keep Afghanistan from returning to its old role as an Al Qaeda base? Another Vietnam? Smart strategical policy? Or the U.S. (again) getting enmeshed in a quagmire? Here’s the text of Obama’s remarks.
Here’s a round up of new and old media and political bigwig reaction:
New York Times:
President Obama, speaking to an American television audience on Tuesday night from Bagram Air Base, declared that he had traveled here to herald a new era in the relationship between the United States and Afghanistan, “a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.”
Mr. Obama’s address, during an unannounced visit to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai that sets the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014, was a chance for him to make an election-year case that he is winding down a costly and increasingly unpopular war.
“My fellow Americans,” he said, speaking against a backdrop of armored military vehicles and an American flag, “we’ve traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of new day on the horizon.”
His speech came as an already difficult relationship with Mr. Karzai has been strained by recent events, including the release of photos showing American soldiers posing with the remains of Taliban insurgents and an American staff sergeant who has been charged in the killing of 16 Afghan civilians. Mr. Obama sought to portray the withdrawal as an unalloyed achievement, though it remains far from certain that the Afghan government can hold its own against the Taliban with reduced American support, or that what were once considered critical American goals here can still be met.
Hours after Mr. Obama left Afghanistan, at least two explosions shook Kabul on Wednesday morning, near a compound used by United Nations workers and other foreigners, local reports said. According to an interior minister, at least seven people, including six civilians and a security guard, were killed. The Taliban has claimed responsibility.
The president’s dramatic six-hour visit, ending a year to the day after Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid in neighboring Pakistan, was laden with symbolism, historic and political. Speaking from the country where the 9/11 terrorist attacks were incubated, Mr. Obama suggested that America had come full circle.
Obama used his time with the troops to emphasize the sacrifices they and their families have made over more than a decade of conflict, saying that in doing so they made the bin Laden mission successful and put the long war on a path to its conclusion.
The hours-long visit was directed almost entirely toward an American audience, unfolding while most Afghans slept. It also served as a detente after some of the tensest months in U.S.-Afghan relations.
Since February, American service members have inadvertently burned Korans at a U.S. military base, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly murdered 17 civilians in Kandahar province, and at least 18 NATO troops have been killed by their Afghan counterparts. In addition to straining ties and infuriating Afghans, the incidents have contributed to rising war fatigue at home.
Opinion polls show most Americans no longer believe the war is worth fighting. But the strategic agreement and the troop withdrawal schedule allow Obama to say that he has ended the war in Iraq and is winding down the one in Afghanistan, a position even a majority of Republicans favor.
“The Iraq war is over. The number of our troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home soon,” Obama said Tuesday. “We have a clear path to fulfill our mission in Afghanistan while delivering justice to al-Qaeda.”
The Christian Science Monitor:
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll on US opinion toward the Afghan war, released in mid-April, showed support for the war at an all-time low, with only 30 percent of Americans saying it has been worth fighting. And for the first time, a majority of Republicans said the war had not been worth fighting.
Obama has faced opposition from his political left, which argues for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, faces an even tougher challenge with public opinion, as he supports staying in Afghanistan until the Taliban has been defeated. The Islamist group ruled Afghanistan until the US-led war overthrew it in 2001, though it is still an insurgent force in the country.
Senior administration officials, speaking to reporters on background on a conference call, defended Obama against the idea that he planned the trip on the bin Laden anniversary for maximum political effect.
“This was a unique opportunity to achieve a core objective of our policy in Afghanistan – to sign this agreement, to do it on Afghan soil, to visit with our troops, and again, to do so as we mark a point in time that helped put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat and, again, helps open a door to a better future for both Afghanistan and the United States,” said one official on the call.
The official said that the Strategic Partnership Agreement had been under negotiation for the past 20 months, and only completed in recent weeks. Both presidents, he said, had set a goal of completing the agreement in time for the NATO summit in Chicago later this month, and so there was a window of time for the signing of only a few weeks.
Both presidents also wanted to sign the agreement on Afghan soil, he said, “because it’s an indication of the progress that we have made together and the future that we are building together here in Afghanistan.”
Then, in one stealthy plunge by Air Force One into pitch-black Afghanistan, Obama swooped in to steal the news cycle and the mantle of war president, last worn successfully by George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Except this time the role of John Kerry, Team Obama hopes, will be played by Romney.
“The Republicans made political hay out of 9/11, which was a tragedy that happened in part because Bush, [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice did not do their jobs,” said veteran strategist Paul Begala, who is advising the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action. “Obama should get great credit for a triumph which happened because he did his job with rare bravery.”
Obama’s rhetorical focus on the killing of bin Laden — the most satisfying accomplishment during a decadelong slog through the Afghan “Graveyard of Empires” — seemed to overshadow the strategic cooperation pact Obama inked with President Hamid Karzai, the official purpose of the mission.
The grim reality of life in the country intruded shortly after Obama departed, when Taliban insurgents launched at least three coordinated explosions in Kabul near the U.S. Embassy, including one car bomb, according to The Associated Press.
“I think you have a president who is completely blurring the traditional line between politics and military action,” veteran GOP pollster David Winston said. “People don’t like that. The bin Laden killing was one of the few things that people in both parties could celebrate, and now he’s turning it into this partisan thing.”
But other Republicans think Romney should just grin and bear it. Romney enjoys a nearly limitless flow of super PAC cash; Obama gets the big blue plane and an all-access pass to any U.S. military base in the world.
Joe Scarborough on his Politico blog:
In 1960, John Kennedy created a missile gap with the Soviets out of thin air to defeat Richard Nixon.
Four years later, LBJ shamelessly used his “Daisy” ad to suggest that a Goldwater administration would cause a nuclear war.
In 1968, Richard Nixon lied about a secret plan to get out of Vietnam.
In 2002, Karl Rove and the GOP used September 11th as a wedge issue against Democratic candidates.
And in 2012, President Obama is using the killing of Osama bin Laden as a political tool.
If you are shocked by such things, get over it. Be more concerned with the president’s declaration that U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan until 2024. That reality means Americans who were not even born on Sept. 11, 2001, will be occupying Afghanistan 20 years after those attacks. Never mind that the epicenter of Al Qaeda’s operation has moved to Yemen or that U.S. taxpayers are doling out $2 billion a week on a war whose main purpose is propping up one of the most corrupt regimes on the face of the Earth.
Making matters worse is the fact that Mr. Obama’s opponents in the GOP want to stay longer.
The takeaway of President Obama’s speech tonight is simple. The neocons won, the troops lost and the endless war grinds on in a land that humbled the Soviet Union, the British Empire and Alexander the Great. Good luck with that, Mr. President.
PBS on what the pact does and doesn’t do:
CBS News’ anchor Scott Pelley reported extensively from Afghanistan over the years. He contends Obama’s speech was also a message to Iran and to Pakistan:
Mr. Obama made an unannounced visit to the country Tuesday, during which he signed a long-term security agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that allows for the United States to potentially keep military forces in the country in a support role until 2024, a decade after the 2014 deadline for U.S. combat troops to go home. Pelley told Gayle King and Charlie Rose the continued American presence is intended to soothe Pakistan’s nerves about the Afghan government’s military.
“The Pakistanis are very concerned about this army we’re building up in Afghanistan, about half a million men trained and equipped by the United States,” said Pelley. “Afghanistan, as you know, is a completely destitute country. It could never afford to keep that army in the field, so the Pakistanis are saying, ‘What’s going to happen if the United States pulls out? We’re going to have half a million armed men unemployed on our border.’ So, what this signal was from the president was to say, ‘We’re pulling our combat troops out by 2014, but we’re not going anywhere,’ reassuring the Pakistanis, warning the Iranians on the other side of Afghanistan we’re going to be here for the long haul.”
As the President highlighted the eventual transfer of authority to the Afghan government, the administration sought to temper expectations of what will be left behind.
After more than 10 years of a sustained military presence, US relations with the Afghan government, as well as with neighbouring Pakistan, have soured and the situation on the ground has deteriorated.
The Taliban continues to pose a security threat even with the gains that have been made since Mr Obama’s revamped war strategy. The Karzai government continues to be hobbled by theft, bribery and the inability of its forces to control all areas of the country.
“The insurgency remains a resilient and determined enemy and will likely attempt to regain lost ground and influence this spring and summer,” the Defence Department wrote in a semi- annual report released in Washington yesterday. “Additionally, the Afghan government continues to face widespread corruption that limits its effectiveness and legitimacy.”
Progress that’s been made since Mr Obama ordered the surge of troops in 2010 may be undermined by the withdrawal of US and allied combat forces in the next two years, the support of insurgents by neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, and the remaining connections between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, said Seth Jones, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, Virginia
“There’s a major question about whether this process can be continued for the foreseeable future with the very light force presence,” Jones, who has advised the US military, said in a telephone interview yesterday from New York.
The US will still have the capacity to carry out counter-terrorism operations to keep al-Qaeda from resettling and allow for a regional equilibrium that serves a national security interest at home, according to an administration official who briefed reporters on the flight to Afghanistan.
While the official said there would still likely be Taliban influence in some villages and remote mountainous regions, the threat will be mitigated by having a stable Afghan government in control of major cities, roads and thoroughfares.
Obama’s speech as seen on TV:
New York Times’ The Caucus:
Mitt Romney is witnessing the power of the presidency.
For months, the former Massachusetts governor has been the Goliath in a field of Davids — better organized, far richer and more experienced than those who challenged him. In the end, he was able to use his superior resources to dominate, and eventually vanquish, his Republican rivals.
But the last few days, as his focus has shifted to President Obama, have provided a stark reminder that the political scales have shifted. Mr. Romney’s Boston-based operation faces an incumbent president whose fearsome campaign machinery of 2008 is now bolstered by the incalculable advantages of the office Mr. Obama holds.
On Friday, the president’s Chicago campaign team sent a message that little is off limits, using a searing video to raise doubts about Mr. Romney’s toughness in a national security crisis. They followed that up on Tuesday with a hard-hitting, kitchen-sink television commercial accusing Mr. Romney of sending jobs overseas and of sheltering his personal wealth in Swiss bank accounts.
And then, in a seamless transition, Mr. Obama was in Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, vividly reminding Americans of the weighty responsibilities that he shoulders as the nation’s commander in chief and — by way of the one-year anniversary — of his decision to approve the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
His short speech to the nation — carried live by the TV networks after a top-secret trip to Kabul on Air Force One — offered the kind of platform that no challenger can hope to have.
There was no campaign build-up surrounding the trip, and the secrecy in which the mission was conducted – utilizing the cover of darkness to help shepherd Obama safely into the active war zone – hardly set it apart from Obama’s other trips to Afghanistan or Iraq.
But after the campaign between the Democratic incumbent and Republican foe Mitt Romney was subsumed by a spat over how much credit the president deserves for authorizing the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden a year ago to the day – and whether his Republican rival would have authorized the same mission – Tuesday’s trip by Obama sends an unmistakable message: there is only one commander in chief.
“No political objections. This is what commanders in chief are supposed to do,” said Ari Fleischer, the press secretary to President George W. Bush in 2001, when the al Qaeda attacks were launched against New York and Washington. “Just think how much better it could have been for the president if he never did the attack Romney ad.”
“I think it’s always good when the president goes to where young men and women are in harm’s way,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN Tuesday afternoon.
The 2008 Republican presidential nominee has been an outspoken critic of the way Obama has used the bin Laden killing as a political chit. He said he couldn’t accuse Obama of making the trip to Afghanistan for political purposes, and didn’t view it as excessively celebratory.
….The “Strategic Partnership Agreement” being signed Tuesday by Obama and Hamid Karzai, his Afghan counterpart, pledges continued U.S. support for Afghanistan after NATO’s mission there ends in 2014. It doesn’t speak to troop or funding levels, but rather looks to install a framework for an organized withdrawal of international forces in hopes of avoiding strife.
But it’s still difficult to divorce those very serious goals from the political implications of this visit; in truth, Obama’s trip to Afghanistan does reinforce his image as a commander in chief, even if that outcome were entirely unintended by the White House.
And the Romney campaign is mindful of that powerful imagery.
Their acute sense of these national security politics were on display Tuesday when Romney joined former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose legacy is forever tied to his handling of the bin Laden-directed attacks on lower Manhattan. They met at a firehouse that suffered particularly steep losses on Sept. 11, 2001, and hailed the president for authorizing the mission.
There remains much to be done in Afghanistan. With Karzai constitutionally term-limited, Afghans will have to not only pick his successor in 2014, but grapple with an electoral process that’s been dogged by security problems and corruption allegations. “The pact helps psychologically and politically but only somewhat—we’ll need more, ongoing progress on issues like getting ready for the 2013/2014 Afghan political transition and continuing the hand off of main security responsibility in key regions to Afghan forces, to build up positive momentum and a sense of success,” O’Hanlon says. Suffice to say, this is not likely to be the last surprise trip a U.S. President makes to Kabul.
Nothing was essentially changed by what the media lovingly called his “secret trip” to the war zone, which was simply unannounced for security reasons.
The remarks (Scroll down for the full text, as usual) were well-written, even with literary flourishes about a new dawn coming as the president spoke at 4 a.m. Afghan time. He wanted to avoid any sense of “Mission Accomplished.” And at 11 minutes, blessedly brief for the Real Good Talker.
Here’s what Obama got politically from this stagecraft: Bonus public attention focused on the Osama bin Laden assassination anniversary. Photos of troops clamoring for his fist bumps. An entire day focused on him, his words and non-stop talk of the 10-year war winding down.
An entire news day, one of only 189 precious ones left before Nov. 6, not focused on Solyndras, prostitution scandals, GSA parties, $5 trillion in new national debt, no federal budget for three years running, high unemployment, sluggish growth, legal crucifixions nor Mitt Romney.
Nevermind the Kabul explosions, killing at least six, a couple of hours after his brief visit.
While Obama earned attention for a 2002 anti-Iraq war speech, the Afghan conflict has always been the “good war” in his eyes. Obama denounced President Bush’s Iraq troop surge that ultimately enabled Obama to claim he ended that war, But Obama ordered two of his own, larger troop surges into Afghanistan.
Senior administration officials denied the charge of critics, including Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, that the president was exploiting the event for political gain. Negotiations with the Afghans for a strategic partnership agreement have been in the making for 20 months, and were finally completed in recent weeks, they said. The timing of the trip was driven by the desire of both presidents to sign the agreement on Afghan soil before the NATO summit in Chicago later this month, they said.
Obama had always planned to spend the anniversary thanking US troops, they said.
“Given that window of time, it is certainly a resonant date for both of our countries,’’ one administration official said. “This was a unique opportunity to achieve a core objective of our policy in Afghanistan . . . and to do so at a point in time that helped put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat.’’
Since US forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban government that was harboring bin Laden, 1,957 American troops have lost their lives – 381 of them since bin Laden’s death.
The National Journal’s Major Garrett:
Embedded deep within President Obama’s appearance in Afghanistan on the one-year anniversary of the special forces raid that killed 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden was a post-Cold War commander-in-chief’s declaration he wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his Cold War predecessors.
Obama didn’t say it in so many words, but his 11-minute address to the nation from Bagram Air Base was a promise to wage Charlie Wilson’s war under the guise of Obama’s peace.
At the end of the 2007 movie based on the book of the same name, Charlie Wilson’s War bid audiences adieu with this bittersweet coda: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world.”
To which Wilson, the Democratic congressman from Texas who devoted his life to clandestine funding of the Mujaheddin to defeat the invading Soviets in Afghanistan, says: “And then we f**cked up the end game.”
When Obama told the nation that the new 10-year security agreement with the corruption-pocked government of Hamid Karzai marked a new chapter in U.S.-Afghan relations, he wasn’t kidding.
According to Obama, the message to Afghans still menaced by Taliban thugs (who frighteningly stormed Kabul last month), is that the new agreement means “as you stand up, you will not stand alone.”
That means, Congress willing, America will not bug out. Though Obama spoke of the end of 10 “dark” years of war and a bright future of Afghan sovereignty, the far deeper message was Americans would be situated in Kabul and elsewhere until 2024 – and quite probably, much longer.
Obama’s visit and address comes as his re-election campaign is engaged in an effort to claim credit for the raid that killed bin Laden’s death and raise doubts about whether Republican rival Mitt Romney would have ordered the mission. Romney insists that “even Jimmy Carter” would have taken out bin Laden if given the opportunity, and Republicans have objected fiercely to the Democratic attacks. Nonetheless, some of his fiercest Republican critics, most notably John McCain, told reporters ahead of his televised speech that they approved of Obama thanking the troops in person on an important date in military history.
A senior administration official swatted down a question from a reporter on whether the Afghan trip represented “craven politics,” saying on a conference call before Obama’s address that the White House and Afghan President Hamid Karzai had long planned to sign a status agreement ahead of a May 20 NATO summit in Chicago. Doing so in Afghanistan, marking the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s death, was a natural choice, the official said. The official noted that the date was “resonant” not only for Americans, but for Afghans for whom the terrorist leader and his Taliban hosts “brought great suffering.”
There’s a lot of media/blog discussion HERE about how the White House tried to “smother” news of Obama’s Afghanistan trip before he actually was willing to announce it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a quirky systems problem this morning some edits on this post have not appeared. This post has been written and put onto TMV in real time. But changes and corrections made sometimes did not go through — or reappeared when they were removed. We regret this problem and are looking into it A typo on the headline was fixed four times so far.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.