Obama aims to reduce troops in Afghanistan

President Obama on Tuesday announced the United States would reduce its presence to Afghanistan to less than 10,000 troops.

Saying it was harder to end wars than to begin them, Obama said the U.S. would leave just 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends in 2014.

“The bottom line is, it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said in comments from the White House.

{mosads}The 9,800-troop level will be cut in half in 2015, and when Obama’s presidency nears its completion at the end of 2016, he said the only U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be those guarding the U.S. embassy.  

Obama made it clear in his comments that he wants his presidency remembered for ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that when he first took office, there were nearly 180,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.