President Obama made his first trip to Afghanistan as Commander in Chief on Sunday to meet with President Hamid Karzai in a surprise visit.  The trip comes at a strategic time, first for the President to assess the progress of his new strategy which had him increase the number of troops in the country from 60,000 to over 100,000.  The second reason for the trip was to directly engage President Karzai and questions of cronyism, and rampant corruption within the Karzai government.  And lastly, the President wanted to help boost the troops morale before a major offensive into Kandahar province expected very shortly on the heels of the successful Helmand Province operation.

As such, the President spoke to troops stationed at Bagram Air Force Base to thank them for their service and courage.  He alluded to the political unrest back in the United States and urged the troops to ignore the fiery language and know that, while Americans may disagree on certain issues, they are united in support of American troops overseas. 

The crowd was very excited to see the President and responded well to his speech, but it was clear that at least a portion of his speech was for the benefit of progressive members of the Democratic party, with the President reiterating his commitment to draw down troop levels in 2011, even though most analysts believe that the United States and its allies will have a presence in Afghanistan for much longer than that.

In any event, watch the speech below and see what you think: