U.S. president Obama, ordering drawdown of surged U.S. forces in Afghanistan, urges nation-building at home

President Barack Obama, in a widely anticipated speech tonight, announced a brisk drawdown of 33,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of next summer sation, and called more broadly for the U.S. to assume a more pragmatic approach to international interventions in order to focus on economic recovery and nation-building at home.

"We are a nation whose strength abroad has been anchored in an opportunity for our citizens at home," Obama said that in the brief twelve minute speech from the White House East Room. "Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times. Now, we must invest in America's greatest resource — our people."

"America, it is proper time to focus on nation building here at home," he said.

The United States had achieved significant progress in the counterterrorism goals Obama outlined when he ordered the surge of U.S. forces to Afghanistan in a speech at West Point in December 2009, he said. Among those goals: reversing Taliban gains in Afghanistan, degrading Al Qaeda's capabilities and eliminating several of its commanders in Pakistan, and building up the Afghan security forces to eventually be able to secure their own country.

Obama's decision to withdraw all of the surged forces by next summer was on the more far-reaching end of the range of options his national security advisers considered, senior administration officials described in a call with journalists this afternoon. Pentagon officials, including the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus, had advocated for a less rapid drawdown, national security hands indicated. Petraeus, who Obama has nominated to head the CIA, is due to leave Afghanistan later this summer.

The steeper drawdown decision comes as a new poll shows for first time that a majority of Americans want U.S. forces to be brought home from Afghanistan, and as lawmakers in both parties are expressing growing impatience with the expense of the war.

But some national security experts said Obama risked jeopardizing advances against the Taliban achieved with the troop-intensive counterinsurgency strategy Petraeus had championed.

"The President's plan strikes me as solid in concept but a bit rushed," said the Brookings Institutions' Michael O'Hanlon. "Ideally next year's drawdown would have until the end of the year or until early 2013 so the U.S. troops could successfully conclude the fighting season."

"A president is supposed to get the best advice from his generals and then make up his own mind. That is what we have presidents for," said Heather Hurlburt, a former Clinton administration official who now serves as executive director of the progressive National Security Network. "But it's very difficult: the president has to listen to the advice of the generals, [but also] to the level of fatigue of the American people [with the war], and a whole lot of other things.