‘Time of war’ is ending, Obama tells Americans

President Barack Obama said Wednesday a “time of war” was ending in a moment of US renewal, after slipping into Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death.
In a highly political election-year address from outside Kabul, Obama posed as a commander-in-chief who ended two long wars and crushed Al-Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a nation exhausted by conflict and recession.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end,” Obama said, recalling a decade-long “dark cloud of war”, as America fell into an Afghan morass after bin Laden plotted the September 11 attacks in 2001.
“Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon,” said Obama, seeking to use political capital earned by bringing troops home to validate his request for a second White House term. Obama earlier dropped from the night skies into Kabul in secrecy and signed a deal with President Hamid Karzai, cementing 10 years of US aid for Afghanistan after NATO combat troops leave in 2014.
“Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war, yet for a decade we’ve stood together,” Obama said at the signing ceremony at Karzai’s presidential palace.
“We look forward to a future of peace. We’re agreeing to be long-term partners,” said the president, who later headed home aboard Air Force One after just six hours on the ground. Obama trod a delicate political line, reassuring Americans the war was ending but steeling them for possible sacrifices to come — all while trying to pivot politically back to the need to rebuild at home.
“It is time to renew America,” Obama said at Bagram air base, against a backdrop of military vehicles in their sandy desert liveries.
“A united America of grit and resilience, where sunlight glistens off soaring new towers in downtown Manhattan, and we build our future as one people, as one nation.”
Though he sought to put a capstone on the war, Obama’s statement effectively meant that US troops could be fighting for two more years, and some could remain in danger for a decade after that.
Obama bluntly told US soldiers that “some of your buddies are going to get injured, some of your buddies may get killed”.
“There is going to be heartbreak and pain and difficulty ahead, but there is a light on the horizon because of the sacrifices you have made.”