Thread: Obama wants to get out of Iraq and concentrate on Afghanistan

Obama and McCain Duel Over Foreign Policy

By JOHN M. BRODER and LARRY ROHTER

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama said on Tuesday that the addition of tens of thousands of combat troops to Iraq last year had significantly reduced violence in the country. But he said that positive developments there had not changed his mind about the need to pull troops from Iraq so America could focus more on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

In an address in Washington that was the most detailed outline yet of his national security strategy, Mr. Obama said it was time to rapidly end the war in Iraq, which he opposed from the start, and to begin to address the resurgent Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he said posed a far greater danger to American security than did the chaos in Iraq.

Mr. Obama’s likely Republican opponent for the presidency, Senator John McCain, drew the opposite conclusion from events in Iraq. He said the success of the so-called surge, which he supported from the start, pointed the way toward victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Today we know Senator Obama was wrong,” Mr. McCain said at a town-hall-style meeting in Albuquerque. “Senator Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counterinsurgency used in the surge, which Senator Obama opposed, that we will win in Afghanistan.”

In near-simultaneous appearances about 1,700 miles apart, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain drew sharp battle lines on Iraq and Afghanistan, where rapidly evolving events have tested the candidates and their positions. In an interview on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS shown on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama acknowledged a “shift in emphasis” on certain issues but suggested that they paled in comparison to Mr. McCain’s shifts.

In his address on foreign policy, Mr. Obama argued that the war in Iraq had distracted the United States from what he called the central front in the fight against terrorism, the lawless areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where Al Qaeda was regrouping under Taliban protection. He said the well-organized attack on an American base in Afghanistan last week was a sign that the United States was dangerously outgunned.

Mr. McCain said that both Iraq and Afghanistan were important battlegrounds and that the United States had the ability to fight in both places as long as it retained the will to do so. But on Tuesday, after saying for months that no additional forces were needed in Afghanistan, Mr. McCain changed course and advocated the deployment of an additional three brigades, or about 15,000 troops.

Mr. McCain also said the United States should help strengthen civil institutions in Afghanistan and help eradicate the heroin trade, proposals echoed by Mr. Obama on Tuesday.

Mr. McCain painted Mr. Obama as naïve and untraveled, and pointed to his own extensive experience in the military and the government. “I know how to win wars,” said Mr. McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war. “And if I’m elected president, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory.”

Mr. Obama, in a 38-minute speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, said the war in Iraq had distorted America’s foreign policy, cost it thousands of lives, tarnished its image and emptied its treasury.

He said that as president he would swiftly end the Iraq war and reorient the American approach to the world to address the challenges of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change and energy dependence.

“George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq; they have a strategy for staying in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops surrender, even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government, not to a terrorist enemy.”

In a series of interviews, statements, advertisements and speeches over the past week, Mr. Obama has been laying out a broad vision of America’s role in the world in an Obama presidency. He has spoken of reducing American combat forces in Iraq and adding as many as 10,000 troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has emphasized the application of so-called soft power, the use of diplomacy and economic aid, over the use of force. And he said that as president he would try to mend alliances that have frayed in the seven years of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Mr. Obama will make his first overseas trip as a presidential candidate at the end of the week. He is scheduled to visit Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Germany, France and England. He has also said he plans to travel soon to Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush, in a morning press conference just before Mr. Obama’s address, weighed in with some advice for the Democratic candidate.

Mr. Bush urged him to “listen carefully” to the top American officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus. “You know, there’s a temptation to let the politics at home get in the way with, you know, with the considered judgment of the commanders,” he said. “That’s why I’ve strongly rejected an artificial timetable of withdrawal.”

The president also said he was adjusting troop levels to respond to improved conditions in Iraq and to new threats in Afghanistan. “The question really facing the country is will we have the patience and determination to succeed in these very difficult theaters,” Mr. Bush said. “We’re at war, and now is not the time to give up.”