Surprise Visit to Iraq

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 7, 2009; 10:07 AM

ISTANBUL, April 7 — President Obama made a surprise visit to Iraq Tuesday afternoon, landing on Air Force One in Baghdad at 4:42 p.m. local time after concluding an eight-day overseas tour through Europe.

The unannounced visit to a war zone was a closely guarded secret that
was kept from many of the president’s staff and the press corps, which
had been following him across the globe for the past week.

It is Obama’s first visit to Iraq since becoming president and comes
after he fundamentally altered the mission there, launching a 19-month
drawdown of most combat troops by the summer of 2010.

As a candidate, Obama had promised to end the war, which will have
lasted more than 7-and-a-half years by the time most of the troops are
gone. But as president, he has moved cautiously, saying that he had a
responsibility as president to safeguard U.S. troops and Iraqis as
American forces withdrew.

“So some people might say, ‘Wait, I thought you were opposed to the
war, why don’t you just get them all out right away?’ ” Obama told
students at a town hall meeting in Istanbul just before he left for
Iraq. “Well, just because I was opposed at the outset it doesn’t mean
that I don’t have now responsibilities to make sure that we do things
in a responsible fashion.”

Obama’s last visit to Iraq came during the height of the
presidential campaign in July. During that trip, which also included a
visit to Kabul in Afghanistan, then-senator Obama met with senior Iraqi leaders, U.S. officials and military commanders.

In a news conference in July, Obama rejected criticism from his
Republican opponent that he was planning to ignore the advice of U.S.
military leaders.

“The notion is, is that either I do exactly what my military
commanders tell me to do or I’m ignoring their advice,” he said at the
time. “No, I’m factoring in their advice but placing it in this broader
strategic framework . . . that’s required.”

Since then, the security in Iraq has largely continued to improve, although six bombs ripped through Baghdad on Monday, killing more than three dozen people in separate incidents.

In America, the political and military discussion has largely shift
to Afghanistan, where security has worsened amid a resurgence of the
Taliban and the al-Qaeda terrorists who U.S. officials say are hiding
on the border with Pakistan.

Two weeks ago, Obama announced a broad new policy on the region, saying
he would send 17,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan, largely
drawn from the slow decrease in troops expected in Iraq.

The policy counts on fresh support from America’s European allies to
provide help in training a new Afghan police force and in building the
political and social structures that can help change the dynamic in the
war-torn country.

Allies this week largely refused to provide additional combat troops for the mission there. But the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and others did offer strong endorsements of a new and more aggressive approach to defeating terrorism in the region.