VIDEO: Surprise! Obama's in Afghanistan

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Perhaps needing a break from his battles with Republicans, President Barack Obama dropped in on the troops in Afghanistan today.

"You will succeed in your mission," he told more than 3,500 cheering troops in a huge airplane hangar at Bagram Air Field. "We said we were going to break the Taliban's momentum. That's what you're doing. You're going on the offense, tired of playing defense."

However, a planned face-to-face meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai was abruptly scrapped in favor of a phoner, according to the Associated Press, due to bad weather (hmmm … ).

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Sheryl Huggins Salomon is senior editor-at-large of The Root and a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based editorial consultant. Follow her on Twitter.