President Plans for Withdrawal of Troops

President Barack Obama Tuesday night laid out a plan for withdrawing over 30,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 2012.

In a televised speech to the American public, Obama said the war "will come to a responsible end."

The plan, to withdraw 10,000 by the end of 2011 starting in July and another 23,000 troops by fall 2012, brought criticism and support even before the president's speech was delivered.

The drawdown will still leave 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, according to the Huffington Post.

Some 1,500 members of the military have fallen and 12,000 have been wounded since the 2001 U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press.

Following the president’s speech, California Senator Barbara Boxer (D) criticized the strategy for not going far enough to bring the troops home quickly.

 “I am glad this war is ending, but it’s ending at far too slow a pace,” she said in a written statement. “We need a swifter turnover of responsibility to the nearly 300,000 Afghan forces we have trained, which would allow our brave military men and women to come home sooner.”

The Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base does not currently have a unit deployed in Afghanistan (the base’s 640th Aviation Support Battalion of the California Army National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq). However the base has served as the somber location for the Hero Missions of fallen Southern California soldiers whose cofins are flown in from oversees to the Los Alamitos base.

It is where Maj. Robert J. Cottle, 45, Corporal Claudio Patino IV, and Army Sgt. Jason Weaver, 22, of Anaheim returned home to their families.