Obama arrives in Afghanistan for surprise visit --- BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — President Obama arrived in Afghanistan Sunday for an unannounced visit to mark Memorial Day with U.S. troops, now in the final months here of America’s longest war, and to begin final discussions over the size of the U.S. force that will remain beyond the end of the year. -- Obama departed from Washington on Saturday night under cover of darkness and arrived at this U.S. base outside Kabul, the capital, under the same secrecy. It is his fourth trip to Afghanistan as president and his first in two years. -- The visit will last only a few hours and end before sunrise. But it comes at a crossroads moment in Afghanistan’s political transition as the long tenure of President Hamid Karzai winds down, as well as for the Obama administration’s post-war strategy, which advisers say he will begin describing publicly in the coming weeks. -- Administration officials said Obama will meet first with Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham to receive a battlefield update and discuss the civilian and military resources needed here after this year to continue training Afghan forces and to assist in specific counterterrorism missions. --Obama will begin outlining those plans Wednesday in a scheduled speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he intends to trace the broader shift underway, more than a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, from an American wartime foreign policy to a post-war one. -- “We are at a bit of a turning point in our foreign policy generally,” Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. “Our foreign policy is going to be a lot different than it has been over the past decade, and the president will speak to what that transition will mean.” -- A similar transition is underway in Afghanistan, now in the midst of its first democratic transfer of power in the country’s long history. --- Obama will not meet with Karzai, with whom he has had a stormy relationship and is now, for the most part, biding his time until a tenure that has spanned the post-9/11 period ends this summer. The country’s presidential election in April produced two finalists — former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and onetime World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani — who are on a runoff ballot scheduled for June 14. -- Rhodes said Obama will be careful not to inject his visit into the runoff campaign, remaining on this base and avoiding discussion of the candidates. -- “We are mindful that we are in the middle of an election season,” Rhodes said. But he added that Obama’s visit is also meant, in part, to assure the Afghan public that “no matter what happens we have an enduring commitment to Afghanistan.” --- Obama and his military command are eager for the election to be resolved. The winner will be asked immediately to sign a security agreement that will help determine how many U.S. forces, now numbering 32,000 troops, will remain in Afghanistan after the end of the year. The number could range as high as 10,000 troops to meet what Rhodes said would be a twin training and counterterrorism mission. -- Karzai confounded Obama last year by refusing to sign the agreement after months of negotiation, saying that such a significant step should be left to his successor. Both Abdullah and Ghani have stated publicly that they intend to do so within days of taking office, probably in July. -- U.S. officials say the agreement must be endorsed as soon as possible to give U.S. military planners time to complete drawdown schedules — including decisions on what bases to close here — and make arrangements for the next phase of the U.S. military presence after nearly 13 years of war. -- “Afghanistan is still a place that’s very violent,” Rhodes said. “We are not going to leave Afghanistan a perfect place.” --- On his return trip to Washington, Obama will stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he also will spend time with troops convalescing in the military hospital there. - More, Scott Wilson, Washingtonpost, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-arrives-in-afghanistan-on-surprise-visit/2014/05/25/7df61452-e41f-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html