As President Barack Obama was announcing last month the U.S. would step up troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, Sgt. Daniel Bowers was packing his bags for a second deployment there. Bowers, part of the Georgia National Guard’s 214th Field Artillery Battalion, based in Elbert County, left Tuesday for nine months of training at Camp Shelby, Miss., before beginning a nine-month tour in the war-weary country. “It’s been a long 11 years” of American involvement in the country, said his wife, Nicole, a Hall County native living in Buford.