What Afghans think about President Obama’s troop drawdown (The Newsroom)

By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / June 22, 2011

Kabul, Afghanistan

President Obama is slated to announce plans to begin a withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan — the first of its kind since the US and NATO officially entered Afghanistan nearly a decade ago.

Though initial estimates look to be modest, many Afghans are greeting the news of US withdrawal with a mix of joy and concern.

"People are happy when they hear that the foreigners are preparing to leave. All the security problems are because of them. If they leave, who will Al Qaeda and the Taliban say they are fighting against?" says Shah Wali, a money exchanger in Kabul. "Personally, I think they should not leave too fast. They should do it step by step."

Mr. Obama is expected to make an official announcement tonight about the drawdown and exactly how many soldiers will leave.

Initial estimates indicate that the US will remove 5,000 soldiers this summer, followed by another 5,000 in the winter or spring of 2012. The US president is also looking at plans that could bring home the remaining 20,000 troops he ordered here as part of a 2009 surge by the end of 2012.

Presently, there are about 100,000 US forces stationed in Afghanistan. Since Obama took office, the number of US troops in Afghanistan has nearly tripled.

In addition to its efforts to bring security to the country, the US has invested more than $60 billion for relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan. However, many Afghans complain that those investments have not impacted their life positively, if at all.

"The Americans were here for the past 10 years and there was some development but not in our district. In the meantime, the security situation got worse and the Taliban and Al Qaeda got stronger day by day, so this means their presence was useless for providing security," says Golum Habib, a member of the local government in Takhar province's Rustak district. "They are not able to bring security, so they can go."

Mr. Habib adds that there may be more fighting or a revolution after US forces leave, but he says that Afghanistan may be better off if left alone to solve its own problems. Still he wants America to continue providing his nation with humanitarian assistance even after its troops leave.

Related: As troop drawdown nears, is NATO surge working in Afghanistan?

At the Gulbahar Center, a Western-style shopping mall in downtown Kabul, Zabiullah Shadman has been closely following the news about the pending US drawdown. He's been disappointed by the inability of foreign forces to bring security and worries that if they leave now civil war may break out again. Already, business has been slow at his dress shop because many people fear the mall is a likely target for an attack.

If it gets any worse, he adds, "people with money will just take their money and leave." He says he is even considering fleeing to a Western country if the situation gets any worse.

Although Fakhria Latifi, who works on a USAID-funded project, would like foreign forces to leave her country, she says they must not do so until they've created a situation that can provide lasting stability. Otherwise, she worries that the Taliban or other extremist groups could regain control of the country.

"My main concern is that if the foreigners go and the Taliban come back, how will it affect women? They will not have access to schooling and jobs," she says, adding that 2020 would be a better date for the final withdrawal rather than 2014. "My other concern is how long will we depend on the foreigners."

Still, a number of Afghans doubt that the US is in any hurry to leave, and this frustrates them. The debate about whether the US will keep permanent bases here has long been part of the heated discourse among Afghans.

In Kandahar, which has been at the center of fighting throughout much of the war but has seen recent improvements in security, tribal elder Haji Faisal Mohammed sees the initial drawdown as a positive step toward addressing Afghan fears that the US wants to be a permanent occupying force.

"If America starts to withdraw their forces it will be a big blow to enemies of Afghanistan because it will show that America does not want to occupy Afghanistan," he says. Still he adds, "I don't think that America will be in such a hurry to leave. I think America just wants to start implementing [its] promises."

Among some Afghans, there is also an awareness of America's mounting domestic pressures to end the war. Given the economic drain and steadily rising death toll, Mangal Sherzad, a law professor at Nangarhar University in Jalalabad says it's unlikely the US can stay in Afghanistan much longer.

"Even if they don't want to take their forces out of Afghanistan, they must do it," he says. "America has realized that they cannot win by just fighting and from the other side Obama has to fulfill the promises he made to his nation to bring the troops out of Afghanistan."

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What President Obama’s immigration speech tells us about 2012

President Obama has a delicate dance to do on immigration reform. Mark Wilson/Pool via Bloomberg President Obama’s speech Tuesday in Texas was cast as an attempt at restarting the conversation about comprehensive immigration reform but will almost certainly land with a dull thud in a Congress wary of taking on an issue so fraught with political pitfalls.

Obama, of course, knows that. And so, his speech today is rightly understood — and analyzed — as a political document rather than a policy one.

So, what does the speech tell us about how immigration fits into Obama’s broader political strategy in 2012?

Viewing it through that political lens, the speech is — on its face -- trying to serve two very different constituencies.

On the one hand are Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic group in the country and one that has voted heavily for Democrats in recent elections. (Obama carried the Latino vote with 67 percent in 2008, Democrats won the group with 60 percent in 2010.)

Hispanics, broadly, support the idea of a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million (or so) people in the country illegally.

Obama made a bow to this sentiment early in the address; “We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants — a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts,” he said.

The other constituency at which Obama’s speech was aimed is independent/swing voters who tend to view the idea of comprehensive immigration reform more skeptically.

Obama touted a series of border enforcement successes under his watch — the construction of a border fence, the seizure of 31 percent more drugs etc. — as evidence that he had listened to (and answered) critics who said that securing the border was a sine qua non for comprehensive immigration reform.

“The presence of so many illegal immigrants make a mockery of all those who are trying to immigrate legally,” he added.

It’s a delicate political dance. Obama has to make clear to Hispanics that he shares their vision of the American dream while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the rule of law matters and that he has put policies in place that are actually making the border more secure.

His strategy to do just that — at least judging from his speech in Texas — is two-pronged: a straight-forward economic appeal and a broader (and oft-repeated) message about the need for Washington to take on big problems.

Several times in his speech in El Paso, the president sought to cast the need for immigration reform in economic terms.

“Immigration reform is an economic imperative,” he said at one point; At another, he argued that “one way to strengthen the middle class is to reform our immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everyone else.”

Obama and his political team know that the economy is, by far, the most important issue for most voters heading into 2012. Immigration, well, isn’t. But, by twinning the two — rhetorically at least — Obama is seeking to make clear that immigration should matter to anyone worried about the future of the country’s economy, giving it a relevance beyond what it currently has in many peoples’ minds.

Then there is Obama’s less specific appeal to the widespread belief — across voters of all demographic groups — that Washington is playing politics at the expense of the public.

“We’ve seen good faith efforts — from leaders of both parties — fall prey to the usual political games,” he said. Later, Obama said that “we have to put the politics aside”, adding: “Washington is behind the country on this.”

That idea is indicative of Obama’s larger messaging as he heads into his 2012 reelection campaign — that Washington is resistant to doing big things but that he has demonstrated an ability to make the gears of political power work for average people.

It’s a complicated approach to a complicated issue. But it’s one with significant political implications as the President seeks to re-build — and grow — the coalition that helped elect him in 2008.

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George Allen’s latest ‘gaffe’ (and what it says about his 2012 campaign)

Former senator George Allen (R-Va.) has stoked some racial controversy yet again. (AP Photo/Bristol Herald Courier, David Crigger) (David Crigger - AP) On the surface, it looks like former senator George Allen (R-Va.) stepped in it again.

A local TV news reporter named Craig Melvin, who happens to be a tall, African-American man, tweeted Tuesday night that Allen greeted him by asking him: “What position did you play?” For the second time in five months.

Allen insisted in a tweet that no offense was meant; “Sorry if I offended, ask people a lot if they played sports. Grew up in football family found sports banter good way to connect,” Allen wrote in response to Melvin.

And, another local TV reporter tweeted Thursday, after the Melvin episode began making the rounds, that Allen uses the ice-breaker with him – a white man – too.

“Clearly, George Allen was not looking to offend anyone, and he responded directly to the original tweet to make sure that (Melvin) understood his thinking and understood what he was discussing,” said Dan Allen, a spokesman for the former senator.

Whether or not you believe that the situation was one big misunderstanding, it served to highlight a central question Allen must answer in his 2012 bid: Can he adapt his hail-fellow-well-met campaigning style to a minute-by-minute political world dominated by Twitter and Facebook?

It’s a question every campaign will have to face, but it is particularly relevant for Allen, given that another emerging technology — YouTube — led to his surprise defeat five years ago.

Allen’s now-famous reference to a Democratic campaign worker as “macaca” ushered in the You Tube era of politics where every moment on the trail was not only captured but available for instant — and easy — uplopading to the Internet within minutes. (The original “macaca” video has now been viewed nearly 600,000 times on YouTube.)

If YouTube was the hot new technology of campaign 2006, then Twitter is the new “it” technology of 2012. The simple fact is that, at even this early stage of the race, Allen has an army of people around him able to report anything he says (in 140 characters or less) at a moment’s notice. And the entry of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine into the race Tuesday means Allen will have no cakewalk.

Allen’s exchange with Melvin quite simply would never have been reported a decade ago or even his 2006 campaign. But Republicans close to Allen’s campaign say, even if he’s got a good excuse for this – admittedly much smaller – gaffe, he needs to realize that everything he says will be under a microscope for the next 19 months.

In the runup to his announcement for Senate, those close to Allen made the case that he had learned his lesson from the fallout from “macaca” — that although he meant no offense by it, the way in which it was reported made him out to be a bully and that he needed to be far more careful in the future.

While the Allen forces deny that the Melvin incident is anything more than a misunderstanding, it also clearly plays into an existing narrative about the former senator that is potentially very problematic for him as he ramps up for a bid to reclaim his old seat.

All that said, a single tweet will not be the undoing of Allen’s 2012 campaign. And, in fact, it may be evidence of Allen’s operation turning a corner.

In 2006, the Allen campaign made its problem infinitely worse by trying to kill the story and jousting with reporters over their coverage of the gaffe. What started as a small story suddenly became something much bigger over the course of a few days.

This time, the campaign is taking a different tack — most notably Allen’s personal apology to Melvin via Twitter, which came well before the story even became big news.

In a perfect world, the Allen team would have liked for this to have never been an issue in the first place. But much of Allen’s problem in 2006 was not the initial comment but his reaction to the controversy it caused.

His reaction this time, at least for now, looks like it should put an end to this episode. But the controversy should alert him — again — to the political dangers of the Twitter era. If he fails to heed this latest warning, his path to the Senate could be far rockier than he originally imagined.

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