The US president Barack Obama has made only the fourth visit of his presidency to Afghanistan as the White House mulls a decision on how many troops to keep in the country beyond the end of the year. America wants to leave a small residual force, but that depends on Afghan president Hamid Karzai's successor agreeing to a security pact that he's refused to sign.
Republican political commentator Ford O'Connell.
FORD O'CONNELL: I tip my hat to the president; this is what you've got to on Memorial Day. But let's be honest, there is a little cynical politics at play here and this is about optics.
You know, his approval rating on foreign policy is 39 per cent; he's getting pounded in the media right now about the VA (Veteran's Affairs) scandal.
He is looking for anything to really change the narrative right now and I think that he's going to try and piggy back this trip into the West Point speech and try to really change basically the subject.
