Obama: Time has come to wind down Afghan war

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Amid fresh con­cerns over the safety of Amer­i­can forces, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Tues­day said the acci­den­tal burn­ing of Qurans in Afghanistan and the retal­ia­tory killings of U.S. troops gave new cre­dence to the need to end the war.

“I think that it is an indi­ca­tion of the chal­lenges in that envi­ron­ment, and it’s an indi­ca­tion that now is the time for us to tran­si­tion,” Obama said dur­ing a White House news conference.

Obama announced no speed­ing up of the NATO-backed plan to end com­bat mis­sions in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, say­ing “that con­tin­ues to be the plan.” But he said the vio­lence aimed at Amer­i­cans in Afghanistan that fol­lowed the acci­den­tal burn­ing of Qurans on a U.S. base was “unacceptable.”

Six Amer­i­cans were killed in retal­ia­tory vio­lence. Obama offered his apolo­gies to Afghan Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai, a move that was roundly crit­i­cized by his Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial rivals as weak and unnecessary.

From Con­gress, Obama was get­ting tugged from another direc­tion. A let­ter call­ing for Obama to accel­er­ate the with­drawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan had the back­ing of 23 sen­a­tors, mostly Democ­rats but includ­ing two con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans, Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Sen. Max Bau­cus, D-Mont., who cir­cu­lated the let­ter with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a state­ment that there “some­thing fun­da­men­tally wrong with spend­ing $88 bil­lion for national build­ing in Afghanistan while we’re ask­ing Amer­i­cans to make tough cuts here at home.”

For­eign pol­icy and domes­tic pol­i­tics bat­tled for top billing in Obama’s first White House news con­fer­ence of the year, which coin­cided with Super Tues­day, the 10-state vot­ing con­test for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hopefuls.

Obama insisted that diplo­macy can still resolve the cri­sis over Iran’s pos­si­ble pur­suit of nuclear weapons, and he accused his Repub­li­can crit­ics of “beat­ing the drums of war.”

Obama said he empha­sized that mes­sage in his pri­vate meet­ings with Israel’s Ben­jamin Netanyahu this week, and implied that Israeli pres­sure for urgent action was not sup­ported by the facts, say­ing that a deci­sion was not nec­es­sary within the next weeks or months.

Address­ing another inter­na­tional cri­sis in Syria, Obama said the vio­lence there was “heart­break­ing” but he showed no new will­ing­ness for mil­i­tary involve­ment in that Mideast country.

Obama said uni­lat­eral mil­i­tary action by the United States against the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad would be a mis­take. And he rejected a com­par­i­son to Libya, where the United States and allies did inter­vene last year, say­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Syria is more com­plex. In Syria, Rus­sia has blocked a U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion against Assad’s gov­ern­ment, and Assad’s mil­i­tary is bet­ter equipped and more pow­er­ful than the Libyan force.

More than 7,500 peo­ple have been killed in Syria dur­ing the year-long gov­ern­ment crack­down on the opposition.

Turn­ing to domes­tic pol­i­tics, Obama said higher gaso­line prices as a result of Mideast wor­ries would be bad for any pres­i­dent run­ning for re-election, and he also said he was work­ing to expand America’s energy base.

Obama also dis­missed as laugh­able the sug­ges­tion by some Repub­li­can crit­ics that he actu­ally sup­ports increased gas prices. No pres­i­dent fac­ing re-election would want to see gas prices rise, he said, because of the hard­ship that would cause Amer­i­can families.

In the past month, gaso­line prices have risen by more than 28 cents per gal­lon, mak­ing gaso­line the most expen­sive ever for this time of year. On Tues­day, the nation­wide aver­age for reg­u­lar unleaded slipped less than a penny to $3.764 per gal­lon, end­ing a string of price increases that began on Feb. 8.

Obama said he had asked his attor­ney gen­eral to exam­ine whether spec­u­la­tion in the oil mar­kets is dri­ving up oil prices.

The pres­i­dent also made an elec­tion year appeal to women, a key vot­ing bloc for Obama in the gen­eral elec­tion. Obama con­fi­dently asserted that Democ­rats would have a “bet­ter story” than Repub­li­cans to tell female vot­ers Novem­ber on every­thing from hous­ing to edu­ca­tion to contraception.

Obama’s cam­paign has been par­tic­u­larly pointed in his out­reach to women on the issue of access to birth con­trol. The pres­i­dent made a pointed entry in the debate last week when he called a George­town Uni­ver­sity Law School stu­dent who was crit­i­cized by radio com­men­ta­tor Rush Lim­baugh because of her vocal sup­port for his administration’s require­ment of birth con­trol insur­ance coverage.

Obama said he tele­phoned San­dra Fluke, who was labeled a “slut” by Lim­baugh, because he doesn’t want peo­ple who speak their minds about pol­icy issues to be dis­cour­aged or attacked.

Asked to com­ment on Limbaugh’s apol­ogy, Obama says he doesn’t know “what’s in Rush Limbaugh’s heart.”

Obama said the inci­dent made him think of his two daugh­ters and his hopes that they can engage in issues they care about in the future. He said he doesn’t want his daugh­ters “attacked or called hor­ri­ble names” for speak­ing their minds and being good citizens.

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.