Obama Tells Troops, ‘Our Task in Iraq Is Not Yet Over’
By HELENE COOPER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: August 31, 2010 NYTimes

WASHINGTON — The United States may be bringing troops home from the war in Iraq, but there is a “tough slog” ahead in the war in Afghanistan, President Obama told troops in Fort Bliss, Texas on Tuesday.

Speaking just hours before he is to deliver an Oval Office address commemorating what is supposed to be the end of combat in Iraq, where some 50,000 troops will remain until next year in a mainly advisory and training role, Mr. Obama nonetheless warned that the American mission is not yet accomplished. Mr. Obama told the troops that his Oval Office address “is not going to be a victory lap; it’s not going to be self-congratulatory. There’s still a lot of work.”

Mr. Obama’s address tonight is meant to convey that he has kept one of the central promises of his campaign: withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq. But he is tiptoeing a fine line between taking credit for the withdrawal and echoing the “mission accomplished” tone that President Bush struck so famously seven years ago, and that came back to haunt Mr. Bush in the ensuing years as Iraq fell into further chaos.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Bush Tuesday morning from Air Force One as he was enroute to Fort Bliss, White House officials said. The two spoke “just for a few moments,” Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told reporters aboard the plane, declining to give any additional detail about the conversation.

In rolling out the promises-kept theme on the Iraq withdrawal, Mr. Obama is trying to reconcile his record of opposition to the war, and to the troop surge ordered by President Bush which many military officials credit for stemming violence in Iraq, with his role as a war-time commander seeking to credit his troops with a mission accomplished.

While there were “big debates about war and peace” across the country, the president said, “the one thing we don’t argue about is that we have the finest fighting force in the history of the world.” He got shouts of approval from the assembled Fort Bliss troops for that line. (The event was covered by a small pool of print and television reporters.)

“The main message I have tonight and the main message I have to you is congratulations on a job well done,” Mr. Obama said. “The most pride I take in my job is being your commander in chief.”

On Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said that he is convinced that under the command of General David Petraeus, the latest American military commander in Afghanistan, “we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists.” But he warned that there would be heavy casualties.Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned against “premature victory parades or self-congratulations” as American combat operations in Iraq drew officially to a close, and at the same time said that the success of United States forces in Afghanistan was only “possible,” not inevitable

In remarks to the American Legion in Milwaukee, Mr. Gates sounded a restrained, sober note about the state of America’s two wars.

In Iraq, he said, the most recent elections have yet to result in a coalition government, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is beaten but not gone, and sectarian tensions remain. He said the 50,000 United States troops still in Iraq would continue to work with Iraqi security forces, who only last week faced a flurry of coordinated insurgent attacks across the country that killed at least 51 people.

“I am not saying that all is, or necessarily will be, well in Iraq,” Mr. Gates, who is one of Mr. Obama’s most influential advisers, told the legion.

In Afghanistan, he said, the Taliban are “a cruel and ruthless adversary, and are not going quietly.” Their leadership, he said, has ordered a campaign of intimidation against Afghan civilians and is singling out women for brutal attacks.

“I know there is a good deal of concern and impatience about the pace of progress since the new strategy was announced last December,” Mr. Gates said, referring to Mr. Obama’s decision to send to Afghanistan 30,000 additional United States troops, who have finished arriving only this month. Total American forces in Afghanistan now number nearly 100,000.

But in an attempt to draw a parallel between the current fragile stability of Iraq and what might be possible in Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said that the intensifying combat and rising casualties in Afghanistan were in many ways reminiscent of the early months of the surge of United States forces ordered in Iraq by President George W. Bush in 2007, when American troops were taking the highest losses of the war.

“Three and a half years ago very few believed the surge could take us to where we are today in Iraq, and there were plenty of reasons for doubts,” said Mr. Gates, who helped make the surge decision as Mr. Bush’s defense secretary at the time. But “back then, this country’s civilian and military leadership chose the path we believed had the best chance of achieving our national security objectives, as we are doing in Afghanistan today.”

He added: “Success there is not inevitable. But with the right strategy and the willingness to see it through, it is possible. And it is certainly worth the fight.”

Despite his cautious tone on Iraq, Mr. Gates cited what he called dramatic security gains. He said that violence levels this year remained at their lowest level since the beginning of the war in 2003, that American forces have not had to conduct an airstrike in six months and that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been largely cut off “from its masters abroad.”

In Washington, a senior intelligence official told reporters that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is estimated to have just 10 percent of the strength it had during the peak of its manpower in 2006 and 2007. The official declined to provide the actual figures that the estimate was drawn from, and he said he expected the group would have a core of fighters inside Iraq for “a long time to come.”

The senior official, who declined to be identified because he was discussing classified intelligence assessments, noted the sharp reduction of violence in the country and said that attacks in Iraq had been lowered to a “tolerable” level.

He said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps continues to provide “equipment, training and a refuge” for various militant groups in the country, and that Iran’s support for these groups was almost certain to continue as the United States reduces its military presence in the country.Mr. Gates said the gains had been purchased “at a terrible cost”: 4,427 American service members killed, 34,268 Americans wounded or injured and untold losses and trauma endured by the Iraqis themselves.

Mr. Gates’s voice seemed to choke as he then said: “The courage of these men and women, their determination, their sacrifice — and that of their families — along with the service and sacrifice of so many others in uniform, have made this day, this transition, possible. And we must never forget.”

In Afghanistan, Mr. Gates promised that the United States would take a hard line against corruption in the Afghan government. He also echoed Mr. Obama and senior military commanders by saying that the president’s deadline for the start of withdrawals of United States forces from Afghanistan next July would be a gradual beginning, not a massive departure.

“If the Taliban really believe that America is heading for the exits next summer in large numbers, they’ll be deeply disappointed and surprised to find us very much in the fight,” he said.