McCain, Obama vow Afghan troop buildup

WASHINGTON — Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain shifted their foreign-policy focus Tuesday from Iraq to the deteriorating war in Afghanistan, with both White House hopefuls pledging thousands of additional troops and a large-scale infusion of aid for the Afghan conflict.

In doing so, the two men offered sharply different assessments of the Iraq war and its impact on the effort in Afghanistan, with Obama, D-Ill., saying Iraq has been a distraction from the war on terrorism and McCain, R-Ariz., calling it a proving ground for the tactics needed to beat back a resurgent Taliban.

In a speech in Washington, D.C., intended to burnish his credentials as a potential commander in chief, Democratic contender Obama repeated his pledge to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months after taking office. He pledged to send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan to quell the growing Taliban insurgency.

"As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority that it should be," said Obama, who's preparing his first trip overseas. "This is a war that we have to win."

McCain, at a town-hall meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., parried Obama and implicitly distanced himself from President Bush's handling of Afghanistan.

"The status quo is not acceptable. Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive," he said.

But McCain said Bush's buildup of troops in Iraq last year — which Obama opposed — was the right strategy and should be replicated in Afghanistan. He pledged three more combat brigades of about 3,500 troops each, and proposed doubling the size of the Afghan army.

The sudden shift of emphasis to Afghanistan underscored that as security improves in Iraq, the next president's major challenge may lie in the revived Islamist revolt in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas next door.

Violence is up sharply across much of Afghanistan, threatening the fragile, Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, and U.S. military officials say al-Qaida and its allies have been able to re-establish a sanctuary across the border in Pakistan.

For both candidates, the new focus from Iraq to what has been called the forgotten war is likely to resonate with voters. A narrow majority of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan has been worth the costs and the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida in the region must be won to triumph in the broader war on terrorism, according to a Washington Post poll released this week. Most Americans do not believe that about Iraq.

And the forgotten war isn't quite so forgotten anymore. Last month, more U.S. service members died in Afghanistan than in Iraq. On Sunday, nine soldiers were killed and more than a dozen were wounded when hundreds of Taliban fighters stormed the perimeter of a U.S. forward operating base. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly called for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan this month, even as he conceded they are not available because they are committed to Iraq.

Although both candidates acknowledged those dire circumstances, the Republican and Democratic hopefuls used the war in Iraq as a very different springboard for their policy recommendations.

"It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large," Obama said in a major foreign-policy speech in Washington, D.C. "Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia."

Obama also said the Iraq war has not made America safer and "the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq and it never was," drawing a response from Bush at a White House news conference.

The president said the United States is waging a "two-front war" in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other fronts less visible to Americans. He also acknowledged worsening security conditions in Afghanistan and said he is analyzing whether more troops need to be sent there.

"One front right now is going better than the other, and that's Iraq, where we're succeeding, and our troops are coming home based upon success," Bush said. "Afghanistan is a tough fight. ... And it's really important we succeed there, as well as in Iraq."

McCain said U.S. forces must apply the lessons they learned in their fight against insurgents in Iraq to the fighting in Afghanistan.

"We must strengthen local tribes in the border areas who are willing to fight the foreign terrorists there — the strategy used successfully in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq," he said. "We must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it is ours."

Significant differences exist between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the proportion of troops to the population is vastly smaller. Afghanistan is an impoverished country with an opium-dominated economy, high illiteracy, rugged terrain and a long, porous border with major insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. Such factors make it more difficult to protect the population against insurgent influence, develop effective Afghan forces and spread the government's authority.