Obama says more troops will stay in Afghanistan next year

Posted 2015-03-25 11:29 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

President Obama on Tuesday formally abandoned his pledge to bring U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan down to 5,000 by the end of this year, saying the current force of about 10,000 will remain there into 2016.

Yet Obama also firmly reiterated his goal of completely ending the military mission in Afghanistan before he leaves office in January 2017.

Obama acknowledged that the change will mean longer deployments for some troops and more strain on the military but said the additional effort may be critical to securing long-term success in Afghanistan.

“It means some folks are going to be rotating back into Afghanistan for a few extra months relative to what otherwise would have been the case.” Obama said at a White House news conference alongside Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

“We are essentially moving the drawdown pace over to the right for several months … in part because we want to make sure we are doing everything we can to help the Afghan security forces succeed, so we don’t have to go back, so we don’t have to respond in an emergency because terrorist activities are being launched out of Afghanistan,” Obama said.

“We are on a path to do that, and it was my assessment as commander in chief, it made sense for us to provide a few extra months for us to be able to help in things like logistics…training, advising and strategic input,” the president said.

In effect, Obama said he will back away from the commitment that he made in May 2014 to drawdown today’s force of 10,000 to about 5,000 by the end of this year. The rise of Islamic State militants in Iraq last summer has fueled concerns that Obama’s initial plan was pulling U.S. forces out too quickly.

Now, Obama says he will give the Afghanistan mission’s commanding general, Army Gen. John Campbell, the “flexibility” to keep the current force level through the end of the year and complete the drawdown by the end of 2016.