Politico:

What happened to the Afghanistan surge?

Obama:

“Already, we have brought home 33,000 of our brave servicemen and women. …Tonight, I can announce that over the next year, another 34,000 American troops will come home from Afghanistan. This drawdown will continue. And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."

Judging by this speech alone, it sounded like Obama has presided over a successful and steady withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan. One key fact was missing: he’s also the one responsible for sending over the troops he’s pulling out.

When Obama took office, there were about 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He allowed planned increases to continue, bringing the number of troops up to about 68,000 by the end of 2009. Then Obama went even further, authorizing a surge of another 33,000 troops in 2010.

Obama roughly tripled troop levels from those President George W. Bush had in place. And even with the drawdown plan he announced Tuesday, Obama plans to have more U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the next year than when he took office.

And when Obama talked vaguely about “the nature of our commitment” after 2014, he was referring to keeping a still-to-be-determined number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan though he never said that directly.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/state-of-the-union-fact-check-a-look-at-obamas-claims-87556_Page3.html#ixzz2LCY7FfaL

Unfortunately, no new era of international peace has been ushered in for American soldiers or citizens under Obama . During his presidency, our military has sustained an estimated 70 percent of the 1,987 casualties and nearly 80 percent of the 17,519 injuries that have taken place in Afghanistan.

Despite candidate Obama ’s harsh criticism of President Bush’s war strategies and his 2002 anti-war speech in Chicago, Obama has, “in fact built on his predecessor’s national security tactics.” And while the media was up in arms over those tactics when President Bush used them, apparently building on and augmenting them is no big deal.

President Obama has greatly increased surveillance of citizens, classified more government documents than any other president, preserved CIA renditions and significantly increased drone strikes.