United States

Military de-escalation in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan

A hallmark of Obama’s campaign had been his contention that the Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq had been to the detriment of the situation in Afghanistan; Obama argued that Afghanistan should have been the focus of U.S. military efforts. As security conditions in Iraq continued to improve, the new administration began slowly removing U.S. military personnel, with an announced goal of ending U.S. combat operations by mid-2010 and exiting the country entirely by late 2011. Meanwhile, in response to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, in February 2009 Obama raised the total troop commitment there to 68,000 and began three months of deliberations on the military’s request for another 40,000 troops, ultimately deciding to deploy an additional 30,000 troops over the objections of many Democrats. The issue of national security took centre stage on Christmas Day, 2009, when a bombing was thwarted on an airliner bound for Detroit. The perpetrator, a young Nigerian, had been trained for his mission by extremists in Yemen.

In June 2010 Obama confronted a different kind of criticism when the commander of NATO-U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and members of his staff impugned top Obama administration officials in interviews with a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine. Obama relieved McChrystal of command and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge strategy in Iraq. Although the bulk of U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in August with the official on-time end of the combat mission in the country, some 50,000 U.S. troops remained on duty there.

McChrystal, Stanley: resignationPres. Barack Obama announcing the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal while surrounded by (left to right) Adm. Mike Mullen, Vice Pres. Joe Biden, Gen. David Petraeus, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, June 24, 2010.Official White House Video