Wartime Presidency - Obama Presidency Oral History

As a candidate, Obama had argued that the War in Afghanistan—a war originally launched to defeat the terrorist group Al Qaeda, which received sanctuary from the ruling Taliban government—had been neglected by the Bush administration. During 2009, Obama made a series of decisions to “surge” the number of US troops and civilian officials in Afghanistan while also trying to refocus US strategy on core objectives. In oral history interviews, numerous officials reflect on the intensive Afghanistan strategic review personally overseen by President Obama in fall 2009. The review surfaced differing visions over war plans and required troop levels, and highlighted tensions in civilian leadership of the military after nearly a decade of warfighting posture.

The strategic review culminated in a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, in which Obama announced the deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan while simultaneously identifying July 2011 as the start date for an American withdrawal from the country. Narrators discuss the many diplomatic and bureaucratic challenges that persisted, including the strains on US active-duty troops and veterans, the fragility of Afghanistan’s democratic government, a complicated relationship with neighboring Pakistan, and the uncertain prospects of negotiations with the Taliban. 

Meanwhile, the existence of a withdrawal plan put pressure on Afghans’ efforts to establish a responsive democratic government and to cement the gains that had been made in areas like agricultural development, women’s rights, and education. These themes are emphasized in an interview with Azizullah Royesh, an Afghan Hazara educator and founder of the Marefat School—a humanist, co-educational institution in Kabul which counted US officials among its many supporters.

Obama subsequently revised the Afghanistan withdrawal timetable several times, ultimately reducing the US presence to roughly 8,400 troops by January 2017—a fifth of the 40,000 troops stationed there when he took office.

Similarly in Iraq, the impending withdrawal of US forces—negotiated by the outgoing Bush administration in 2008—threatened to alter the fragile dynamics that had developed during years of US occupation. Hadi Pir, a member of Iraq’s Yazidi minority who worked with the US military, remembers how the prospect of sectarian warfare after a US withdrawal led his family to emigrate to the United States. In interviews, administration officials reflect on the US role in Iraqi negotiations to form a unity government and preparations for the withdrawal of US combat troops. Barack Obama and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki celebrated the end of the war in a December 2011 ceremony during which Obama promised a continued partnership with Iraq.

That celebration was marred just two years later, when in 2013 the terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched an offensive and seized large swaths of Iraqi territory. In response to ISIL’s brutal policies towards ethnic minorities such as the Yazidis, the Obama administration announced the redeployment of troops to Iraq as part of a multinational coalition. That effort is discussed in the Counterterrorism topic essay. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are closely related to a number of other topic areas in the collection, including those on Veterans and Human Rights.