Today, all our troops are out of Iraq. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and defense ministers were quick to agree, saying the size of the force should be based on security conditions rather than a fixed timeline.
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He promised to end the war on his watch. “They’re not looking for us to do it for them”, Obama said. “And that the USA does not want the achievements made over the past 14 years to be reversed”.
President Obama announced on Thursday that he was halting the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
He again emphasized this was not his preferred option.
Obama never mentioned Iraq Thursday, but the tenuous situation there has no doubt hung over his decision-making on Afghanistan.
He said the decision was not made in consideration of the actual situation in Afghanistan.
“The president’s 5,500 figure may be a way to leave office before the cost of a failed approach becomes fully clear, but it is not a strategy”, says Anthony Cordesman, a national security and U.S. military strategy expert at the Center for Strategic and global Studies in Washington. In late September, Taliban fighters captured the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, the first Taliban seizure since the war began in 2001.
The group said in a statement that the vehicle was carrying a team from a joint investigation being conducted by the United States, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan government into why a USA aircraft fired on the hospital, killing at least 22 staff and patients.
America’s 60-year troop presence contributed to South Korea’s transition from a country devastated by war one of the Asia’s most affluent countries. Twenty-five Americans, including military personnel and civilian contractors, have been killed this year, Obama noted in his White House remarks Thursday.
The USA military has taken responsibility for the air strike, which occurred during intense fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban in the early hours of October. 3.
The president had originally planned to withdraw all but a small embassy-based force from Afghanistan in late 2016, shortly before leaving office.
Afghanistan’s stability is vital to the U.S. and Afghan troops who are now in charge of security are not yet as strong as they need to be, Mr Obama said, adding, “If they were to fail, it would endanger the security of us all”.
Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-2nd) say the US needs to learn from the rise of ISIS in Iraq after USA troops pulled out.
The administration’s assessment that the mission in Afghanistan is “working” seems to refer primarily to the “train and assist” part of the two-prong effort, but Obama also cited the positives in having a continued counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan.
Syria: The scale of the USA air campaign in Syria is similar to the one in Iraq, but the Syrian war poses even greater challenges.
Mr. Obama’s government tried the same approach in Afghanistan.
The Kurds are pro-American and have fought effectively in the northeast of the country, but are unlikely to go beyond the limited areas where the Kurdish population is concentrated. Plus the Islamic State group has emerged as a new threat in Afghanistan.
Russia’s entrance into the fighting in support of Assad has further complicated the equation.
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“The goal and the mission is to obey the president and do what the country feels best”, Whitehead said.
