Obama arrives in Afghanistan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan at 3:15 Eastern time on Saturday to begin the first leg of his international tour, according to the New York Times. The Illinois senator will travel to Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Britain, France and Germany during his overseas trip.

Details of the trip have been shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, but the Times reported today that Obama is scheduled to visit Iraq some time this weekend as well.

Senator John McCain has attacked Obama recently for failing to visit Afghanistan and for not visiting Iraq in two years. McCain said this week that Obama's overseas trip was long overdue and used the occasion to question Obama's leadership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committe, where Obama chairs the subcommittee on European Affairs.

Earlier this week, Obama distinguished himself from McCain in an op-ed for the New York Times, citing his opposition to the Iraq War as a major difference between the two candidates.

"Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president," he wrote. "I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks."

Obama also repeated his opposition to the surge begun in January 2007, arguing "the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true." Obama said "the strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we've spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted." In addition, he said Iraq's leaders had failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their country, and "have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge."

During his overseas trip, Obama is scheduled to meet with the leaders of several nations and to give a public address in Germany. President John F. Kennedy' delivered a famous 1963 speech in which he said "Ich bin ein Berliner" and President Ronald Reagan also spoke at the site of the Berlin Wall in 1987, encouraging Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."