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Jason Burke The Observer,
Sunday July 20, 2008
Barack Obama, the US Democratic presidential candidate, arrived in Afghanistan yesterday, amid tight security on the first leg of his high-profile tour of war zones and foreign capitals.
The tour, aimed at boosting his foreign affairs credentials with voters at home and introducing himself to world leaders for the first time, started with visits to American troops on the front line.
On the way to Afghanistan, Obama stopped at Camp Arifjan, the main US military base in Kuwait and a major gateway for US soldiers moving into and out of Iraq.
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Nutter, a spokesman for the US military in Kuwait, said Obama ‘talked to soldiers and constituents and met with senior military leaders’.
During the two-hour visit, the officers gave him an overview of operations, Nutter said.
Obama was due to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday, after spending the afternoon visiting troops stationed near the eastern city of Jalalabad and consulting senior American army commanders at headquarters in Bagram.
Today Obama, who is travelling with staff, advisers and senior US television journalists, is expected to arrive in Baghdad for meetings with Iraqi politicians and American military chiefs. ‘I look forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,’ Obama told reporters before his departure. ‘I want to talk to the commanders and get a sense of what their biggest concerns are, and I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.’
Obama advocates ending the US combat role in Iraq by withdrawing troops at the rate of one or two combat brigades a month. But he supports increasing military commitment to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding along its border with Pakistan.
Obama recently chided Karzai and his government, saying it had ‘not gotten out of the bunker’ nor helped to organise the country and its political and security institutions.
Also on his trip itinerary is a meeting with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi leader. On the campaign trail, Obama has said one benefit of withdrawing US troops is that it would push Maliki to shore up his government.
Obama, 46, who is ahead of Republican rival John McCain in most polls, but is seen as inexperienced in foreign affairs by many voters, has controversially pledged to withdraw US troops from Iraq within a year if he wins the presidential election in November. The plan was endorsed by Maliki in an interview published yesterday.
In Kabul, Obama’s reception among ordinary Afghans was mixed. ‘I’m not sure it will do any good, but it’s nice to be the centre of attention. We feel like we have been forgotten a bit recently,’ said Ahmedtullah Yusufzai, a 32-year-old tailor.
Obama’s week-long trip will also take in Jordan and Israel before he visits Germany, France and Britain.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Meanwhile:
McCain, Obama trade foreign
policy jabs
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican John McCain traded foreign policy barbs Saturday with the campaign of his Democratic rival Barack Obama, who arrived on his first trip to Afghanistan as part of a regional tour.
“Senator Obama announced his strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq before departing on a fact-finding mission that will include visits to both those countries,” McCain said in a radio address.
“Apparently, he’s confident enough that he won’t find any facts that might change his opinion or alter his strategy. Remarkable,” he said.
“This is similar to the mistake Senator Obama made when he confidently declared that the surge in Iraq could not possibly reduce sectarian violence there, and might well increase violence,” McCain said.
“He was so certain the surge would fail that he called for our troops to retreat as quickly as possible.”
The Arizona senator noted that Obama’s previous statements opposing the “surge” of some 30,000 additional US troops to Iraq last year have been removed from his campaign website.
“But we all remember quite well that he said the surge would fail, and today we know that he was wrong,” McCain argued.
The Obama camp shot back, saying that McCain has actually shifted his positions on Iraq and Afghanistan to align more closely with those of his White House adversary.
“On the biggest foreign policy questions of the last eight years, Barack Obama has made the right judgment and John McCain has sided with (US President) George Bush in making the wrong one,” the Obama campaign said in a statement.
“The failure of the McCain-Bush foreign policy has forced John McCain to change his position, and to embrace the very same Obama approaches that he once attacked,” it added, arguing that McCain has begun to advocate “more troops in Afghanistan, and more diplomacy with Iran.”
Obama’s camp said McCain and Bush had until recently “ridiculed Obama’s support for direct diplomacy with the Iranian regime,” but on Friday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed Washington had shifted position on diplomacy with Iran by sending a senior envoy to Geneva to participate in nuclear talks Saturday with Iran’s top negotiator.
“Time has proven Obama’s judgment right and McCain wrong,” Obama’s campaign said.
It also pointed to a report in German weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday that said Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki backed Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months of his election.
McCain said that while “the situation in Iraq is much improved, the war in Afghanistan has taken a bad turn that must be quickly reversed.
“Security in that country has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive,” he said.
“Sending more forces, by itself, is not enough to prevail. What we need in Afghanistan is exactly what General David Petraeus brought to Iraq: a nationwide civil-military campaign plan that is focused on providing security for the population.”
Obama’s campaign said McCain shifted position “for political reasons” over the past week, embracing Obama’s call for more troops and non-military assistance in Afghanistan just a day after the Democrat restated it in a New York Times editorial.
If he wins the November election, Obama has said he plans to commit at least two more combat brigades, up to 10,000 men, to Afghanistan while downsizing the force in Iraq.
Obama arrived Saturday in Afghanistan, where he visited some of the 36,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan to assess efforts against extremist violence at the start of a major international tour.
Obama will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, the Afghan government said.
He is due to travel to Iraq Monday and then to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain.
July 20, 2008 at 12:48 am
… pretty soon it will be the final stretch to the finish line for the presidency of the gooddy US of A come November 4th. May the right man take it all … thanks a trillion
July 20, 2008 at 8:48 pm
By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 20
KABUL, Afghanistan - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror “with vigor” if elected, an Afghan official said.
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On the second day of an international tour designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials, Illinois Sen. Obama and a pair of colleagues held two hours of talks with President Hamid Karzai at his palace in the capital.
Obama has chided Karzai for not doing more to build confidence in his government, which remains weak after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
He made no public comment after the meeting, but said in a written statement that his main purpose was to see U.S troops, thank them for their “extraordinary service” and let them know the United States is proud of them.
Obama said he and his colleagues were talking to military and diplomatic leaders, and Afghanistan’s leaders about whether the U.S. has the right strategy and resources to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida.
“Our message to the Afghan government is this: We want a strong partnership based on ‘more for more’ — more resources from the United States and NATO, and more action from the Afghan government to improve the lives of the Afghan people,” Obama and Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a joint statement. “We need a sense of urgency and determination.
“We need urgency because the threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida is growing and we must act; we need determination because it will take time to prevail,” they said. “But with the right strategy and the resources to back it up, we will get the job done.”
The Afghan presidency said Obama’s message was positive.
“Sen. Obama conveyed … that he is committed to supporting Afghanistan and to continue the war against terrorism with vigor,” said Humayun Hamidzada, Karzai’s spokesman. He said Democrats and Republicans “are friends of Afghanistan and no matter who wins the U.S. elections, Afghanistan will have a very strong partner in the United States.”
Obama has made Afghanistan a centerpiece of his proposed strategy for dealing with terrorism threats. The Illinois senator has said the war in Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants are resurgent, deserves more troops and more attention as opposed to the conflict in Iraq. Both Obama and his Republican rival for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, advocate sending more forces to the country.
In an interview broadcast Sunday in the United States, Obama described the situation here as “precarious” and “urgent,” and said the U.S. should not wait to begin the planning that would be needed to send in more troops. As troops sent to Iraq as part of the buildup of forces there begin to leave, Obama says one to two brigades should be redirected to Afghanistan to bolster the efforts here.
“The situation is precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan and I believe this has to be our central focus, the central front in our battle against terrorists,” Obama told CBS News. “If we wait until the next administration it could be a year before we get those troops on the ground.”
While officially part of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour that is expected to take him to Iraq, Obama traveled in Afghanistan amid the security accorded a likely Democratic nominee for president rather than a senator from Illinois.
Media access to him was limited, and his itinerary was closely guarded.
Earlier Sunday, he praised U.S. troops during breakfast with soldiers at Camp Eggers, a heavily fortified military base in the city.
“To see young people like this who are doing such excellent work, with so much dedication … it makes you feel good about the country,” Obama said.
“I want to make sure that everybody back home understands how much pride people take in their work here and how much sacrifice people are making. It is outstanding,” he said in footage filmed by the military and obtained by The Associated Press.
On Saturday, the delegation received briefings from U.S. commanders and a former Afghan warlord who is now the governor of Nangarhar, a province in eastern Afghanistan where militant attacks are spiraling.
The trip is Obama’s first overseas since he secured the Democratic nomination last month. He is scheduled to travel through Europe this week and give a speech on the U.S.-German partnership and trans-Atlantic relations in front of the gold-topped Victory Column, or Siegessaeule, in downtown Berlin.
Obama advocates ending the U.S. combat role in Iraq by withdrawing troops at the rate of one to two brigades a month while increasing the military commitment to Afghanistan. Obama has proposed sending two more combat brigades — about 7,000 troops — to Afghanistan. McCain, who has criticized Obama for not spending more time in the region, also advocates sending more forces to the war-battered country.
U.S. military officials say the number of attacks in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the U.S. forces in the country operate, has increased by 40 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press on Saturday that after intense U.S. assaults there, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are recently running higher than in Iraq.
Obama also has expressed weariness with efforts by Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, to go after militants in its territory. That frustration may strike a chord with Karzai, who has accused Pakistan’s intelligence service of supporting the Taliban insurgency — a claim Pakistan denies.
But Obama also has chided Karzai and his government, saying it had “not gotten out of the bunker” and helped to organize the country or its political and security institutions.