Obama to leave 9800 troops for one year in Afghanistan
While I was writing about the article earlier from the Daily Beast about the Pentagon asking for 10,000 troops to remain in Afghanistan after the “withdrawal” later this year, the Washington Post was writing their article in regards to the President’s decision to leave 9800 troops in Afghanistan for a year after the “withdrawal”;
The troops will include both forces to train and advise Afghanistan’s military and a separate group of Special Operations forces to continue counterterrorism missions against what the official called “the remnants of al-Qaeda.”
The troops will include forces to train and advise Afghanistan’s military and a group of Special Operations forces.
The decision, to be announced Tuesday afternoon, is contingent upon whether Afghanistan’s new president signs a bilateral security agreement that current President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign. The two candidates in a runoff election scheduled for June 14 have both said they will sign the accord.
The 9,800 troops will be based around Afghanistan until the end of 2015, after which they will be reduced by roughly half and consolidated in Kabul and at the Bagram airfield north of the capital.
Yeah, I don’t see any mention of “victory” so what’s the point? Are the US troops going to be able to teach the Afghans something that they didn’t teach them before? What will half of the US troops in 2016 be able to accomplish that the ten thousand couldn’t in 2015.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Terror War
I will repeat what I said in the other story reagrding this. If it’s training and advice, there are teleconferencing programs available. They can also come here (under guard), attend training as other foreign nationals do, and get the hell back to their 14th century shithole. Or we can PPT them (Many pics, few words.) Leaving any of our people there means they will be captive targets. Or is that the new mission of our military under The Emperor?
I think you should have put a period on the end of your last sentence, Air Cav. It sounds like a blood sacrifice to me.
“contingent upon whether Afghanistan’s new president signs a bilateral security agreement that current President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign”
Well screw Karzai and whoever takes his place and screw Afghanistan! We’ve done all we can do there as far as training and equipping the Afghans. If they haven’t gotten it down pat by now they never will. More American lives left there at higher risk. This again, is an example of Obama at his worst and dumbest. He, Kerry and his whole administration couldn’t facilitate a successful Halloween pumpkin carving event without getting someone killed. But he’s not playing with pumpkins here, he’s playing, again, with American lives.
We should have started dropping fuel air bombs over there until they gave up bin laden. We need a CINC that cares about American lives more than the people who try to kill us.
The Emperor plans to esplain his foreign policy using West Point as his soapbox when he gives the commencement tomorrow. Yeah, when the kitchen gets a little hot…punt it to congress or blame Bush for his inadequacies (I bet the soon-to-be newly minted 2LTs will be warned not to doze off or roll their eyes).
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/27/us-usa-obama-foreign-idUSKBN0E70NB20140527
This is Obummer’s good will gesture because the Taliban need a hobby or else they’ll be back to their war against women and we all know how Democrats feel about that.
From all appearances Dems conduct a very good war on women, and take plenty of cures for waging same from the Taliban.
A little birdy tells me that Civil Affairs troops are going to be a large part of the remaining troop strength. Apparently, it’s to continue integrating the international NGO element into Afghanistan’s infrastructure.
CA will stay there to help work contracts and money for projects. The “developmental partners” as they call NGOs/IOs there, will continue to spend money so the US can claim its not spending money there, though it’ll be giving the money to those developmental partners for them to spend.
CA will coordinate with them to say “here are some projects to potentially fund” and the developmental partners will say, “yep, good idea, we’ll give them a GRANT for that” and that’ll be that.
They will also be there to listen to the provincial officials and national ministries on what the Afghans want and what they need project money for, just as CA’s been doing for a decade plus.
West Wing Conversation
“The boss says 10,000.”
“10,000? Exactly? That sounds too large.”
“Well, then, how about 9,900?”
“That gives the impression we were at 10,000 and came down to make the number more palatable.”
“Um. 9,500–no, wait. 9,800!”
“That sounds so damn legitimate! Okay, put out that number: 9,800. STAT.”
The right number should be those fox not news but neo-con propaganda chicken hawks! They can do their propaganda on fox from a bunker in kabul! And they can tell us where they were during the vietnam war like john bolton!
Jeezus, VWPussy, you are vitriolic AND dumber than dog shit!
The consensus here at TAH is that since the Glorious Leader has no intention of winning, then we should immediately withdraw everybody from that shithole and leave the Afghans to their own shitty devices. You’d think that even YOU would see eye-to-eye with the rest of us on that.
“…those fox not news but neo-con propaganda chicken hawks!”
I’m sure you were serious when you said that, but damn that was funny! I’m going to borrow that, if you don’t mind.
vietnam war protestor aka uss liberty? wtf are you talking about/ go back to woodstock and drop more acid man,put on a tye dye hippie t and drop out,Vietnam wtf?
And no matter what, on 01 January 2015, Obama will give some kind of speech saying, “and I’ve brought the troops home from successful missions in Afghanistan and completed the mission there.”
And his sheep will be saying, “yay, see? Obama brought the troops home again!” Even though there are still troops there, just the same as in Iraq.
On the news tonight:
Cut back to 9800 this year.
Cut that in half in 2015.
Cut to zero, except for embassy staff in 2016.
And send vwpissypants over there as a goodwill gesture.
So I just caught snippets of Barry’s speech today on the news.
According to him “over 180,000 troops were deployed” when he took office.
“By the end of this year, less than 10,000 will be in harm’s way.”
I call bullshit because if there are even 9800 in Afghanistan, there are troops all over Africa (not even including the HOA region) which would put that number OVER 10,000. Troops in countries near Ukraine, troops in Africa just looking for those girls, etc etc etc.
What a maroon.
Would the last American GI leaving Afghanistan turn out the lights. C-4 should do the trick. Of all the billions spent on infrastructure there, my contacts tell me nothing works but the stuff we run and maintain. Power stations sit offline, their Air Force is grounded and more stuff is sold to scrapers for sale on to Pakistan. Afghanistan is not a country, it is a collection tribal groups jockeying for power and influence. A shithole of the lowest order.