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Barack Obama’s June 22 announcement of a phased troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was often portrayed as a major step towards ending the war, with many outlets neglecting to accurately explain the pace of escalation that has happened under his watch.
When Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. had about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has initiated two major troop increases in Afghanistan: about 20,000 additional troops were announced in February 2009, followed by the December 2009 announcement that an another 33,000 would be deployed as well; other smaller increases have brought the total to 100,000. Much of the media conversation portrays the announced withdrawal schedule as a removal of all the surge troops–“the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer,” as the New York Times put it (6/23/11)–which ignores the initial escalation.
News accounts over how many troops might leave should account for the total U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, in historical context. As ThinkProgress noted (6/22/11),
if the reductions are carried out as planned, the United States would still have far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration. This means that the troop reduction would not put us much closer to actually ending the war by the end of 2012.
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