Wednesday evening President Barack Obama appeared before the American people from the East Room of the White House to announce his plan to begin withdrawing United States armed forces from Afghanistan.  His remarks began shortly after 8pm EST and were approximately 15 minutes in length. The President began by invoking the memory of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and offering a brief recapitulation of the war in Afghanistan and the move into Iraq.  He continued by stating that the al Qaeda leaders had moved into Pakistan and that the terrorist forces had regrouped and began to move on the offensive. When Barack Obama was running for President, one of the primary stances of his campaign was that if he took office, he would seek to withdrawal our forces from the Middle East.  President Bush faced fierce criticism for refusing to reduce the number of US troops involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  So Barack Obama committed to voters to bring the troops home.  Instead, early on in his tenure as President he sent a surge of 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.  He did not pull these troops from Iraq, and refocus them on the effort in Afghanistan.  […]