U.S. Goals in Afghanistan Are Meeting with Success, Obama Says

29 June 2011

The president said Libya's Muammar Qadhafi should step down from power and "give his people a fair chance to live their lives without fear."

President Obama says the U.S. mission in Afghanistan will be successful if U.S. forces leave behind a country where the Afghan government and people can provide for their own security, and al-Qaida is unable to attack the United States, its allies or its overseas interests.

Speaking in a June 29 press conference at the White House, Obama said both goals are meeting with success as the United States prepares to draw down 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, and an additional 23,000 by the end of summer 2012.

“The tide of war is receding. We have shifted to a transition phase,” the president said.

Even before al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, Obama said, U.S. forces were able to severely cripple the organization’s capacities and had eliminated some in its middle and upper leadership ranks.

“They are having a great deal of difficulty operating, a great deal of difficulty communicating and financing themselves, and we are going to keep the pressure on,” Obama said.

At the same time he said U.S. and international forces have been able to “ramp up” the training of Afghan troops, adding an additional 100,000 army and police since he announced a surge of U.S. forces in December 2009.

The newly trained Afghan security forces will add to the Afghanistan government’s capacity to defend the country and prevent a collapse that could allow extremist elements to take control of the country again, he said.

Obama said U.S. troops have also been drawn down from Iraq, with the remainder scheduled to leave by the end of 2011. Although Iraq has continued to face violent attacks, he said, it has “been able to maintain a democratic government and to tamp down violence there” without the need for American soldiers.

“We think a similar approach makes sense in Afghanistan,” he said.

“We will … draw them down in a responsible way that will allow Afghanistan to defend itself and will give us the operational capacity to continue to put pressure on al-Qaida until that network is entirely defeated,” he said.

U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN LIBYA HAS PROTECTED THOUSANDS

The president was also asked about the involvement of U.S. forces in Libya, and he said they had been deployed both for U.S. national security interests and “because it’s the right thing to do.”

He said the U.N. Security Council mandate that authorized operations by an international coalition including the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had called on the coalition to ensure that Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s forces could not massacre Libyan civilians.

In response, U.S. forces took out Libyan air-defense systems to allow the international coalition to implement a no-fly zone that could provide the Libyan people with humanitarian protection, he said.

“The Libyan regime's capacity has been greatly reduced as a consequence of our operation,” he said.

The president said there have not been any U.S. forces on the ground in Libya, and there are “no risks of additional escalation.”

“We have done exactly what we said to do under a U.N. mandate, and we have protected thousands of lives in the process. And, as a consequence, a guy who was a state sponsor of terrorist operations … is pinned down, and the noose is tightening around him,” Obama said.

Obama called on Qadhafi to step down from power and “give his people a fair chance to live their lives without fear.”

So long as Qadhafi is heading the Libyan government and controls large numbers of troops, “the Libyan people are going to be in danger of counteroffensives and of retribution,” and it will be hard for the United States to feel confident that they will be protected, he said.