Welcome to Latest News|Powered by Matchart Production

Stay updated to the World trend by following us..We provide the latest news that happened currently around the world..Share with your friend to let them be a person that updated just like YOU...Have fun...

Obama Marks Shift From Iraq Combat as Risks for U.S. Remain - Bloomberg




By Roger Runningen and Julianna Goldman - Aug 31, 2010
12:05 PM GMT+0800
President Barack Obama will give the second Oval Office address of his presidency to mark the transition from a U.S. combat role in Iraq, a shift that won’t end the risks to administration policy or to American troops.
Obama made a promise to wind down the war in Iraq a central element of his presidential campaign, and in tonight’s speech he’ll be able to fulfill that vow while also focusing on broader national security goals and the fight in Afghanistan.
Obama “is now able to make good on his pledge,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at theCouncil on Foreign Relations in Washington. “But he has to be very cautious in doing so because the United States is by no means out of the woods in Iraq.”
The official shift from Operation Iraqi Freedom to a lower-profile Operation New Dawn means the U.S. changes to an “advise and assist” role for Iraqi forces. Since it began with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the war has cost $750 billion and the lives of at least 4,421 Americans. In the U.S., 53 percent of the public said history will judge the war a failure, according to an Aug. 5-8 Gallup poll.
While the number of U.S. troops has dropped below 50,000 and Iraqi forces are taking over responsibility for security, insurgents and extremist groups continue to stage attacks.
War ‘Not Over’
“The Iraq War is not over and it is not ‘won,’” said Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. “This is not a situation where the president is claiming victory.”
Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based policy research group, said the U.S. must maintain a long-term political and military presence in Iraq. The country is still ill-equipped to defend itself, and stability in Iraq is “a core American national security interest,” he said.
In his television address, scheduled for 8 p.m. Washington time, Obama ought to “drop this rhetoric that we’re going to end this war and have all American forces out by December 2011,” Kagan said in a conference call.
There’s a danger of saying “things that can be construed as ‘mission accomplished.’”
Former President George W. Bush’s May 1, 2003, appearance aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a “Mission Accomplished” banner became of focal point of war critics as insurgent violence increased and U.S. casualties rose over the next several years.
‘Watershed Week’
“You won’t hear those words coming from us,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday.
Obama’s address comes as the administration is also moving to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
“It’s kind of a watershed week for the president in the sense that two out of four of the major moving pieces of his Mideast policy are moving into a new stage,” said David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Gibbs said that in his speech, the president will put Iraq into “a bigger context of what this drawdown means for our national security efforts both in Afghanistan and in Southeast Asia, and throughout the world as we take the fight directly to al-Qaeda.”
The transition also means that “the responsibility of charting the future of Iraq, first and foremost, belongs to the Iraqis,” Gibbs said.
Focus on Afghanistan
As the U.S. has decreased its footprint in Iraq, Obama has shifted personnel and resources to Afghanistan, which the president has called the “epicenter” of the terrorist threat to the U.S.
Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, said in an interview that the former president’s decision to deploy more than 20,000 extra troops in early 2007 to quell violence and provide greater security in such places as Baghdad and Anbar Province helped create conditions allowing for the withdrawal.
“For the Obama administration, Iraq has gone from a problem to be shed, to a burden to be borne, to finally, in the words of Vice President Biden, ‘an opportunity for a success’ for this administration,” he said.
“I’ll be the first to give them credit, but they in turn need to credit President Bush for the surge” of troops that “was essential to get the violence down,” Hadley said.
The number of U.S. military personnel swelled to about 170,000 in 2006 and 2007 during the height of the Iraqi insurgency.
Before giving the address, Obama will travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, home of the 1st Armored Division, to welcome soldiers returning from Iraq.
The base in El Paso, with 25,000 active-duty troops, is the second-largest military post after White Sands, New Mexico. More than 200,000 troops have been trained there and sent to Iraq since 2003.


If you understand Mandarin,you can visit our partner site also 


No comments:

Post a Comment