The timing was fortuitous. White House officials believe the president is on a winning streak, and Mr. Obama would like to make some headway on what may become his biggest foreign-policy challenge, the war in Afghanistan. A poll released late last week by CNN found a rise in optimism on Afghanistan, with 44% of the public saying things are going well for the U.S., travel binocularsversus 43% who say things are going badly. That's a 23-percentage-point jump since last November.
The poll found that 48% support the war, versus 49% opposed—anemic, but the first time since May that opposition slipped below 50%.
"Here in Afghanistan you've gone on the offensive, and the American people back home are noticing," Mr. Obama told about 2,000 troops at Bagram Air Base on Sunday. "We have seen a huge increase in support."
Mr. Obama needed to show he was engaged with a war widely seen as his own after his West Point speech in which he said he would send an additional 30,000 troops to the theater, the second troop increase in his first year as president. He had been criticized for not visiting Afghanistan. The second foreign trip of his presidency included a surprise visit to Iraq in April last year, where he greeted troops he hopes to bring home.
Administration officials kept up their tough-love tone with Afghanistan. The trip put the U.S. president's personal credibility behind the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which Obama administration officials have called questionable. rifle scopeBut the first message sent by senior U.S. officials was a stern warning.
The president engaged Mr. Karzai "to make him understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since Day One," National Security Adviser James Jones said, such as "battling corruption, taking the fight to the narco-traffickers," which he said have become the economic engine of the insurgency that Afghan and NATO troops are battling.
The two presidents also discussed continuing efforts to reconcile with elements of the Taliban-led insurgency and to reintegrate willing guerrillas back into Afghan society.
The president will now move to other foreign-policy initiatives: a signing ceremony in Prague April 8 for a strategic arms treaty that will reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons deployments by 30%, a nuclear-weapons control summit in Washington later in April and a United Nations review of the battered nuclear non-proliferation treaty in May. Mr. Obama hopes to use the gatherings to advance new Iran sanctions.
Domestically, the president would like to give congressional Democrats a boost by moving onto politically friendlier terrain.binoculars store On Thursday, the president will travel to Maine for his second trip in two weeks to sell his health-care plan. But on Friday, he will be talking about the economy in North Carolina. That day, the Labor Department will release job-creation figures for the month of March, and Wall Street economists widely expect the report to show at least 200,000 new jobs, the best performance in three years.
The Kabul visit could also overwhelm lingering controversy from his appointment Saturday of 15 senior officials who failed to win Senate confirmation, including union lawyer Craig Becker, who will serve on the National Labor Relations Board.
The trip was shrouded in secrecy for security reasons. The White House informed Mr. Karzai of the visit on Thursday. Mr. Obama ostensibly was spending the weekend with his family at the presidential retreat of Camp David, binoculars manufacturerin Maryland.
In fact, Air Force One took off from Andrews Air Force Base for Afghanistan on Saturday night, arriving just after nightfall local time Sunday at Bagram. He then helicoptered to the Presidential Palace in Kabul just after 8 p.m.
The trip's importance was underscored by the delegation. The president 's foreign-policy entourage included the top echelons of the National Security Council. He was greeted in Afghanistan by U.S. telescope manufacturerAmbassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commanding general of allied forces. He took White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior White Houseadviser David Axelrod.
