Obama in Afghanistan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama began his foreign tour on Saturday with a visit to Afghanistan.

Together with his two Senate colleagues, Jack Reid and Chuck Hegel, Obama put forth a personal impression of the security situation at the scene. According to military sources, they were greeted by U.S. General Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the NATO-led force in the eastern region of Afghanistan and all of the US-led coalition forces in the country. Obama himself said immediately before his departure that he wanted to personally thank the soldiers for their “heroic work.”

His visit was the kick-off of a journey that’s expected to include Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Great Britain. With these visits, the Illinois Senator hopes to hone his foreign policy image. His visit to Germany is eagerly awaited there. Government agencies expect him to deliver a speech at Berlin’s Victory Column this coming Thursday.

In appearances last week, Obama repeatedly focused on the situation in Afghanistan. He accused the Bush administration of not giving as much attention to Afghanistan as it does to Iraq. In the event of his election in November, he’s therefore planning to send an additional 7,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Obama’s Republican rival, John McCain, criticized him for making this decision before ever visiting the region. “Obviously, he’s confident that he won’t find any facts that would persuade him to change his mind or his strategy – remarkable,” the Arizona Senator said during his weekly radio address on Saturday. He further said that he also favors a troop build-up in Afghanistan, but that he would make it dependent on the availability of troops, and only after discussions with NATO. Vietnam veteran McCain is trying to make his 25-years of foreign policy experience a central theme in the presidential campaign against his rival who is 25 years his junior.

It’s still not clear when Obama plans to visit Iraq. There, he will have some support for his ideas concerning the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Iraq’s president, Nuri al-Maliki, has already signaled support for his plan. “U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is saying 16 months, which we find to be the right timeframe, with the possibility of slight changes,” Maliki said in a preliminary report by der Spiegel news magazine.

Critics, meanwhile, question the value of a troop build-up in Afghanistan. Effective help in developing the rural areas and the resolution of local conflicts would be more useful, according to Matt Waldman of the aid organization Oxfam. The United States currently has about 36,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan. This is roughly one-fourth the number in Iraq, despite the fact that more soldiers were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq throughout the two preceding months.