Barack Obama
Democratic Incumbent
Obama has said he views Afghanistan as a central front in the war on terror. In March 2009, he adopted a so-called Af-Pak strategy, which increased focus on targeting terrorist safe havens in Pakistan. He also decided to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan (USAToday) by 33,000 as part of a beefed up counterinsurgency plan. In June 2011, Obama announced a drawdown of 10,000 troops by the end of that year, with a total withdrawal to be completed by 2014.
After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by U.S. forces based in Afghanistan, Obama noted that the removal of Taliban support was one of the steps to bin Laden's demise. On the anniversary of the tenth year of the war in October 2011, Obama also touted U.S. successes in Afghanistan. "We've pushed the Taliban out of its key strongholds, Afghan security forces are growing stronger, and the Afghan people have a new chance to forge their own future," he said. On February 1, 2012, Obama's defense secretary, Leon Panetta, announced U.S. combat missions would end as early as mid-2013, accelerating a transition to a security assistance role.
Despite an uptick in violence against NATO forces in February after news of burnings off the Quran and a massacre of sixteen civilians alledgly by a U.S. soldier, Obama has said he will not speed up the withdrawal deadline.
In April 2012, Obama administration finalized a draft agreeement (WashPost) with the Afghan government on U.S. commitment to the country in the decade after the planned troop withdrawal in 2014. The agreement has not been signed and currently offers few specifics.
In a May visit to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement, which outlines a ten-year U.S. commitment to supporting security and development after the planned major troop withdrawal in 2014. "As I've said before, the United States has not come here to claim resources or to claim territory," Obama said at the signing. "We came with a very clear mission: We came to destroy al-Qaeda."
Ron Paul
Republican Candidate
As a member of Congress, Ron Paul voted to authorize military force after the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, Paul has been a vocal critic of the war in Afghanistan for a number of years, and has repeatedly voiced the view that "acting as the world's policeman and nation-building weakens our country." He believes that the United States is overstretched in wars overseas and wants to cut military spending, including redirecting funding from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to the United States-Mexico border.
In a May 2011 GOP presidential debate, Paul said that now that Osama bin Laden is dead, it would be a good time to "get the troops out of Afghanistan and end that war that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anybody in the Middle East." Paul has compared U.S. involvement in Afghanistan to the Soviet invasion of the country in the 1980s, noting the high economic costs on the regime.
Mitt Romney
Republican Candidate
Romney has criticized setting a withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying it provides too much information to the enemy. He has said repeatedly that his decision (ABC) regarding withdrawing troops from Afghanistan would be based on advice from generals on the ground. A gradual transition, Romney said in a November 22, 2012 debate, is necessary for handing off responsibility to Afghan security forces. "Our effort there is to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching point for terror against the United States," he said.
In an October 2011 white paper, the Romney campaign said that in order to defeat Afghan insurgents, he would make clear to Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the U.S. commitment "must be met with reciprocal efforts to crack down on corruption in his government, respect free and fair elections as required by the Afghan constitution, and coordinate with the United States on fighting the narcotics trade that fuels the insurgency." In November 2011 debate, Romney said that the right timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was the end of 2014.
Romney said on Fox News in February that the United States should focus on helping Afghanistan build up (TheHill) "its own military and security forces" so they can "maintain the sovereignty of their government from an attack from the Taliban. "We do not want to see Afghanistan once again return to a Taliban dominated nation with al-Qaeda and other training camps coming into the nation," he added.
Newt Gingrich (*withdrew)
Editor's Note: Gingrich withdrew his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on May 2, 2012.
Gingrich criticized Obama's speech on Afghanistan in June 2011 on Facebook, saying that the Afghan conflict needed to be placed in the larger context of the "radical Islamist war against America" (DailyCaller) and that a U.S. strategic review should be conducted on other countries, including Libya and Pakistan.
In a November 12, 2011 debate, when asked about achieving peace in Afghanistan through negotiations with the Taliban, Gingrich said that it was necessary to put Afghanistan in the context of the larger region. "You're never going to stop the Taliban as long as they can hide," Gingrich said. "So I think this has to be a much larger strategic discussion that starts with, frankly, Pakistan on the one end and Iran on the other. Because Afghanistan is in between the two countries, and is the least important of the three countries."
In February after the Quran burning incident led to violence against NATO troops, Gingrich said things couldn't be fixed in the country (AJC). "It is not possible," he said. "These are people who have spent several thousand years hating foreigners. And what we have done by staying is become the new foreigners."
He also said following the killing of sixteen Afghan civilians, if he were president, it would be time to make major policy changes in Afghanistan, including immediate withdrawal. "We have to reconsider the entire region," Gingrich said. "We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive. We're not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change. And yet, we are clearly an alien presence."
Rick Santorum (*withdrew)
Editor's Note: Santorum withdrew his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on April 10, 2012.
In June 2011, Santorum criticized the administration's decision to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. "Every American wants our brave men and women home safely, but we cannot let those who've given the last full measure die in vain by abandoning the gains we've made thus far. We must be squarely focused on succeeding in Afghanistan rather than on politically motivated troop withdrawals," Santorum said.
Santorum has called for a forceful response to what he calls a "war against radical Islam." In a November 2011 GOP presidential debate, Santorum said that victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan would mean that they were a "neutered force."
"They are no longer a security threat to the Afghan people or to our country," Santorum said.
Santorum — who said the United States did not owe the Afghans an apology (Politico) after the Quran burning incident in early February— said the killings of Afghan civilians warranted one (ABC). "This was something that was deliberately done by an American soldier to innocent civilians," he said."It's something that the proper authorities should apologize for, for not doing their job in making sure that something like this wouldn't happen, something like this should not happen in our military period."
Rick Santorum said in March that the United States should either commit to winning (Boston Globe) the war in Afghanistan or "get out." Santorum said, on winning (ABC), that if elected, he would "work with the Afghan government to make sure that we commit to them to be successful -- whatever that means."
Campaign 2012
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