Barack Obama's Christmas message to troops: you have made us safer
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Version 0 of 1. Barack Obama marked the end of more than a decade of combat in Afghanistan by paying tribute to America’s military, telling troops on Christmas Day in Hawaii that their sacrifices had allowed for a more peaceful, prosperous world to emerge out of the ashes of 9/11. At an oceanfront Marine Corps base, Obama told troops that while tough challenges remained for the US military in hotspots like Iraq and west Africa, the world as a whole was better off because American troops put country first and served with distinction. He said Americans and their president could not be more thankful. “Because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country,” Obama said to applause from Marines and their families. “We are safer. It’s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again.” Thirteen years and $1tn later the US is preparing to pull the vast majority of its combat troops out of Afghanistan by year’s end, in hope of turning the page on a bloody chapter that started with the 11 September 2011 attacks on America. From a peak 140,000 troops in 2010 the US and Nato plan to leave 13,500 behind for training and battlefield support. The withdrawal comes after the bloodiest 12 months in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. Nearly 10,000 civilians have been killed along with 5,000 Afghan forces as the country has taken greater responsibility for its own security. Insurgents have seized territory across the country, raising fears that Islamist militants will rebound after the US pullout. About 2,200 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan over 13 years in a war that cost the US $1tn, plus another $100bn for reconstruction. A celebratory cheer of “hooah” rang out from the hundreds of troops in Hawaii when Obama affirmed that the combat mission was finally ending. “We still have some very difficult missions around the world — including in Iraq,” Obama said. But, he added, “the world is better, it’s safer, it’s more peaceful, it’s more prosperous and our homeland protected because of you”. On the US mainland and across the globe other prominent leaders were fanning out, echoing the president’s message with their own Christmas visits and phone calls to American troops. The vice-president, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to see wounded troops and their families. The defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, called military members on deployment, the Pentagon said, including those in Afghanistan and others assigned to US Central Command, which is running the US mission to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Across the political divide, Republican Senator John McCain was spending Christmas in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the former navy pilot met on Thursday with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and his chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah. A chief critic of Obama’s foreign policy, McCain is set to lead the Senate armed services committee in 2015. |