Obama slides toward Afghan exit

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama is gambling that his gradual military withdrawal from Afghanistan won’t prompt the tribal country to spin out of control in the next 12 months and will help him run as a jobs-and-growth candidate in 2012.

“America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home,” Obama declared in his prime-time announcement from the White House.

“Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story,” he said in a speech that segued into a campaign-style pitch for the 2012 election.

There were 32,000 troops in Afghanistan when Obama was inaugurated in January 2008. He sent 20,000 troops there in early 2009, and announced an extra surge of 33,000 troops in December 2009.

In his speech, Obama said he would withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of the year, and another 33,000 by September 2012. Most of the remaining 66,000 U.S. troops will then be withdrawn by year end 2014, he said.

“We set clear objectives: to refocus on al Qaeda; reverse the Taliban’s momentum; and train Afghan Security Forces to defend their own country,” Obama said of the 2009 troop surge plan. “I also made it clear that our commitment would not be open-ended, and that we would begin to drawdown our forces this July.”

[Pepper]

Obama’s ‘mission accomplished’ speech on Afghanistan