Afghanistan Dose Have a Well Organized Army

It's us.

President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

  NYT

At least.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

That was silly. But it’s what we wanted to hear, wasn’t it?

Ten thousand troops hunting remnants? And we believed that “no combat role”?

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

Not to mention Hillary Clinton storming along on the edges calling Obama a wimp and advocating for more war business alongside GOP comrades.

In effect, Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.

Yes, I do have a recollection of a bold statement assuring us that we would be out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. Maybe they meant 2114.

According to a senior Afghan official and a former Afghan official who maintains close ties to his former colleagues, in recent weeks both [Afghan president Ashraf] Ghani and his new national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, have requested that the United States continue to fight Taliban forces in 2015 — as opposed to being strictly limited to operations against Al Qaeda. Mr. Ghani also recently lifted the limits on American airstrikes and joint raids that Mr. Karzai had put in place, the Afghan officials said.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.