Taliban says Obama’s decision won’t help Washington or Kabul

We spoke with U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions who slammed Obama’s original plan of withdrawing troops, calling it military “malpractice”.

Americans well remember it was in Afghanistan that the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaida was allowed to thrive – with aid and cover of the Taliban – and do much of the planning for the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“I don’t think there would have been a happy ending in this takeover or this retaking of Kunduz if it weren’t for US support”, said Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “Are they convinced that we’re going to stick it out?” he added.

Originally all but a small embassy-based force were due to leave by the end of next year.

The current USA force in Afghanistan of 9,800 troops will remain in place through most of 2016 under the administration’s revised plans, before dropping to about 5,500 at the end of next year or in early 2017, Obama said.

Obama’s decision thrusts the war into the middle of a presidential campaign that so far has barely touched on Afghanistan.

Veterans at the VFW had a wide range of views on the president’s decision. The force will then be reduced to 5,500 troops.

The top United States military commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Campbell, expressed concern last week over the “tenuous security situation” and said an enhanced military presence would be necessary if the Taliban were to be repelled. The former Florida governor did not say how many troops he thought would be sufficient.

Mr. Obama has made his call.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was an outlier among Republican candidate. The White House also has been buoyed by having a more reliable partner in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who succeeded the mercurial Hamid Karzai past year.

It will be up to Obama’s successor – the third USA commander in chief to oversee the war – to decide how to proceed from there.

In March, after Obama announced that he would alter an earlier timetable for the withdrawal of USA forces, we asked to hear more from the president “about how he intends to ensure that the U.S.is not involved in Afghanistan in perpetuity”.

The announcement comes two weeks after a US air strike hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, killing 22, including hospital staff, patients and children. There is no reason to believe they can hold the whole country.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Carter said, “The mission now on a day-to-day basis is train, advise and assist and counter terrorism”. The troops will be based in Kabul and at Bagram Air Field, as well as bases in Jalalabad and Kandahar.

“Likewise sanctuaries for the Taliban and other terrorists must end”, Obama said. It sends a clear message of enduring commitment to the Afghan Government and to Afghanistan’s long term security.

“It has cost us over 2,000 American lives and almost $1 trillion, so the American people are ready for this to end”, Carson says.