Obama makes surprise trip to Afghanistan:
‘Time of war is ending’
AFGHANISTAN: US President Barack Obama said Wednesday a “time of war”
was ending in a moment of American renewal, after slipping covertly into
Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.
In a highly political election-year address from outside Kabul, Obama
posed as a commander-in-chief who ended two long wars and crushed
Al-Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a nation exhausted by
conflict and recession.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will
end,” Obama said, recalling a decade-long “dark cloud of war,” as
America fell into an Afghan quagmire after bin Laden plotted the
September 11 attacks in 2001.
“Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the
light of a new day on the horizon,” said Obama, seeking to use political
capital earned by bringing troops home to validate his request for a
second White House term.
Obama earlier dropped from night skies into Kabul amid secrecy and
tight security and signed a deal with President Hamid Karzai, cementing
10 years of US aid for Afghanistan after NATO combat troops leave in
2014.
“Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war, yet for
a decade we've stood together,” Obama said at the signing ceremony.
“We look forward to a future of peace. We're agreeing to be long-term
partners,” said Obama, who later headed home aboard Air Force One after
just six hours on the ground.
The pact, agreed last month, sees the possibility of American forces
staying behind to train Afghan forces and pursue the remnants of
Al-Qaeda for 10 years after 2014.
It does not commit Washington to specific troop or funding levels for
Afghanistan, though is meant to signal US foes that despite ending the
longest war in US history, Washington intends to ensure Afghanistan does
not revert to a haven for terror groups like Al-Qaeda.
But after a war that has cost the lives of nearly 3,000 US and allied
troops, maimed tens of thousands more, saw thousands of Afghans killed
and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, Afghanistan's future is deeply
uncertain.
Obama trod a delicate political line, reassuring Americans the war
was ending but steeling them for possible sacrifices to come -- all
while trying to pivot politically back to the need to rebuild at home.
Furious Republicans have accused him of exploiting the heroism of
Navy SEAL special forces who conducted the raid to kill Al-Qaeda chief
bin Laden deep in Pakistan exactly a year ago.
But the president, who faces a tough reelection fight, did not shirk
from presenting himself as the man to shepherd his country out of “a
decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home.”
“It is time to renew America,” Obama said against a backdrop of
military vehicles in their sandy desert liveries.
AFP
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