KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama arrived Saturday in Afghanistan on the first stop of his tour of the Middle East and Europe, aimed at boosting the U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful's foreign policy credentials, his campaign confirmed.
The U.S. senator from Illinois left Washington on Thursday and stopped first in Kuwait to visit U.S. troops there, according to Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs.
Obama plans to visit Iraq, although details of the trip have have not been made public for security reasons.
Obama spoke briefly to a pool reporter about his trip just before leaving Washington.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is," Obama said. "I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they've been doing."
Asked if he would have tough talk for the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama said he was "more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking."I think it is very important to recognize that I'm going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it's the president's job to deliver those messages," Obama said.The fight in Afghanistan has become a more pressing issue on the political radar. Three times as many coalition soldiers and other military personnel have died in July in Afghanistan than in Iraq.On Sunday, nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a fight with about 200 Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in three years.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that U.S. officials are looking for ways to send more troops to Afghanistan, amid the resurgence of violence nearly seven years after the ousting of the Taliban government. Gates said the hope is to send additional forces "sooner rather than later. He said the Pentagon is "working very hard to see if there are opportunities to send additional forces sooner rather than later." That likely means further reductions in troop levels in Iraq later this year to free up forces for Afghanistan.
Shortly after Obama laid out his foreign policy vision in Washington on Tuesday, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain criticized his proposals as naive and premature. McCain visited Iraq in March.
"I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to Gen. (David) Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time," McCain said."In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: First, you assess the facts on the ground; then you present a new strategy."
Obama on Tuesday called the war in Iraq a "dangerous distraction" from the battle in Afghanistan, and said if he is elected one one of his top goals will be to finish the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, which their regime harbored in Afghanistan.
"As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. (John) McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was," Obama said. He said part of his new strategy will be "taking the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
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Obama said that on his first day in office he would give the military a new mission: ending the war in Iraq.
Obama will travel to Jordan on Tuesday, then visit Israel, Germany, France and England
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