President Barack Obama is determined to pull the United States out of the war in Afghanistan.
Obama deliberately left out any manoeuvring room in declaring that a methodical withdrawal has begun. Mainly, he sees a military mission accomplished, without ever using those words. Yet the political context also has changed significantly. A sovereign Afghanistan has tired of the US presence, the financial toll of the war, and the American people also long for an exit.
US troops start going home in July, with more than 30,000 pulling out by September 2012. But the tide has turned, Obama is talking less about boosting the Afghan people and more about helping struggling Americans.
“We won’t try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” the president said in his speech. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”
That, not surprisingly, is what an economy-focused voting public wants to hear.
When President George W. Bush announced the US-led invasion in October 2001 in response to the 11 September attacks, he warned Americans that their patience would be tested “in the months ahead.”
Few believed that patience would be made to stretch 13 years and into Obama’s Presidency.
Obama will go before the voters in November 2012 with more than double the amount of troops in Afghanistan than there were when he took office. Yet he will say that he is the president who accelerated the end of two wars.
Americans chiefly see Afghanistan as the home base of the terrorists who attacked America, and both Bush and Obama were driven to prevent that opportunity again. To regain control of the war, Obama in late 2009 ordered in more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, but always with an eye toward their withdrawal starting this July.
Overruling his military commanders, Obama decided to bring back all the extra troops by about the middle of next year. He attributed his move to the diminished state of the Taliban, better training of Afghan forces, though their capability remains in doubt, and blows against al-Qaeda in neighbouring Pakistan.
For Americans consumed with matters at home, all that talk of progress was measured in one moment, when US Navy SEALs killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Obama’s military advisers acknowledged they had not wanted to pull troops out nearly so fast. Some political voices still push for a slower withdrawal and warn that Afghanistan could slip back into a haven for terrorism, but they make up a lonely minority. This decision is done.
Pessimism about the US economic recovery has taken hold, and Obama knows it. In his announcement last week, Obama spoke of building America’s public works, not Afghanistan’s. It seems that the US is putting American citizens first.