“Your services are absolutely necessary, absolutely essential to America’s safety and security,” the president told a lively crowd of about 2,500 troops and civilians at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul. “Those folks back home are relying on you. We can’t forget why we’re here.”
It was Obama’s first trip as president to Afghanistan, where the number of U.S. troops killed has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared with the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban’s momentum.
“We did not choose this war,” Obama reminded the troops, recalling the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and warning that al-Qaida was still using the region to plan terrorist strikes against the U.S. and its allies. “We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al-Qaida and its extremist allies.”
Obama had gone Friday afternoon to the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland, from which unnoticed departures are easier because of its secluded mountain location. The small contingent of White House aides and media brought on the trip were sworn to secrecy. Obama arrived in Kabul just two days after a threatening new audio message from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding along the ungoverned border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“I thought I’d come over and say hello,” Obama told the troops in a jaunty remark that set the stage for stark reminders of the terrorist threat that rose from this soil.
“If this region slides backwards,” Obama told the troops, “if the Taliban retakes this country, al-Qaida can operate with impunity, then more American lives will be at stake, the Afghan people will lose their opportunity for progress and prosperity and the world will be significantly less secure. As long as I’m your commander in chief, I’m not going to let that happen.”
That resolve was meant just as surely for stateside citizens as for the people who heard it face to face. Polls find that Americans are divided on the war if, more recently, favorable to Obama’s handling of it.
Obama’s dark suit was soiled with dust when he stepped off his helicopter at the presidential palace in Kabul. White House officials said Obama, in private talks, wanted to drive home the point that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Cabinet must do more to battle corruption and cronyism in government.
Karzai “needs to be seized with how important that is,” said Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser. Karzai has raised eyebrows in Washington with recent trips to Iran, China and Pakistan and his welcoming Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Kabul this month.
