President Barack Obama addresses the nation from the White House June 22, 2012.
During a White House address, June 22, 2011, President Barack Obama announced plans to drawdown U.S. troops from Afghanistan. “Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year,” he said, “and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point.”
Obama reflected on the difficult decision he made in December of 2009 to order 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, and keeping his commitment to begin the drawdown of troops this summer: