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Obama In Baghdad: Tells Maliki To ‘Take Responsibility’
President Obama made an unannounced trip Tuesday to Baghdad, punctuating his week-long overseas trip with a stop to talk to American troops and Iraqi leaders.
Addressing hundreds of troops gathered at a military base here, Mr. Obama said that it was time for Iraqis to “take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty,” winning enthusiastic applause.
“You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country,” the president said. “That is an extraordinary achievement and for that you have the thanks of the American people.”
Mr. Obama also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The president said he had “strongly encouraged” the Iraqi leader to take steps to unite political factions, including integrating Sunnis into the government and security forces, The Associated Press reported. He also reaffirmed his pledge to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Mr. Obama’s trip here was his first since becoming president. He opposed the war and has quickly moved to reshape it since his inauguration, announcing plans to draw down troops as he begins to shift the military’s focus to the troubled war in Afghanistan.
Although violence has dropped substantially in Iraq in recent months, Mr. Obama’s visit came a day after at least 33 people died in six car bombings. On Tuesday, another car bomb blew up in Baghdad; a police official said that eight people were killed.
Air Force One landed at Baghdad International Airport under heavy security at 4:42 in the afternoon after military officials shut down the airport. Mr. Obama then traveled by car to Camp Victory, a sprawling base near the Baghdad International Airport. About 300 troops, standing about 5 to 8 deep, saluted Mr. Obama on the ride to the camp.
Mr. Obama later addressed troops inside a marble hall at the center of a Saddam-era palace on the base, a enormous sandstone-colored two-story building on a manmade lake. Scores of troops held digital cameras above their heads, snapping pictures and recording video.
Under Mr. Obama’s new Iraq war strategy, announced in February, the roughly 140,000 American troops now in Iraq will be drawn down to between 35,000 and 50,000 by the end of August 2010. The mission of those left will be redefined mostly to help train Iraqi forces.
The plan would maintain relatively high troop levels through Iraq’s parliamentary elections, to be held in December. Mr. Obama has pledged to remove all American troops from Iraq by 2011.
“This is going to be a critical period, these next 18 months,” Obama said, referring to the Aug 2010 deadline for the withdrawal of combat troops, Reuters reported.
Suspicions had been high that Mr. Obama would go to either Afghanistan or Iraq at the end of his trip, but White House officials kept the plans under a tight lock.
Speaking at a university in Istanbul on Tuesday before he left for Baghdad, Mr. Obama told students that he had opposed the Iraq war in 2003 and had pushed for a quick withdrawal. But he said that once he became president, he had to make sure that the drawdown of troops was carefully staged.
“I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence,” Mr. Obama said. “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? 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.”
His remarks came in answer to a question from a student who asked him if he was more like President Bush in substance than he liked to admit.
“Moving the ship of state is a slow process,” Mr. Obama said. “States are like big tankers. They’re not like speedboats.”
Steven Lee Myers reported from Baghdad and Helene Cooper from Istanbul.
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and HELENE COOPER for the New York Times
For more information, related articles, and video, click the link below for the New York Times
In Baghdad, Obama Presses Iraqi Leader to Unite Factions – NYTimes.com.
