Small Wars Journal

Obama Widens U.S. Afghan Role in Final Months in Office

Sat, 06/11/2016 - 2:45am

Obama Widens U.S. Afghan Role in Final Months in Office by Robert Burns, Associated Press

Far from ending the two wars he inherited from the Bush administration, Barack Obama is wrestling with an expanded set of conflicts in the final months of his presidency, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, where aTaliban resurgence has upset Washington's "exit strategy," Obama is giving the U.S. military wider latitude to support Afghan forces, both in the air and on the ground.

The White House says U.S. forces are not taking on a new mission in Afghanistan but rather will "more proactively support" government forces. That amounts to an acknowledgement that the Afghans need more help than the Pentagon had anticipated last year, and it is a signal to allies not to abandon the U.S.-led coalition. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will be discussing this next week in talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to drop to 5,500 by the end of this year, but the pace of that decline has yet to be decided. One factor in deciding future troop levels is the extent to which NATO allies are willing to remain involved in training and advising the Afghans…

Read on.

Comments

I told you so doesn't cover it.
But now the convolutions of peace making have made a complex problem even worse.
Obama Biden spurned Maliki but are left with the belief the next premier of Iraq will be hard line pro Iran. The attempts by the liberal left to define the Arab Spring as a revolutionary socialist movement has been a problem since and only since Obama took office, he can not blame these eruptions on the Bush regime. This is largely attributable to two factors over reliance on a terrorist group know as the Muslim Brotherhood, and in turn placing too much "hope" for "change" in Iran.
This blog posted an article claiming the Islamic State and the Jihad in general had reached its nadir. I don;t see any proof of it what so ever.
Merely claiming Islam played no part in Orlando, Fort Hood, The Boston Marathon etc.,. I was most amused when the Obama administration announced it got a key leader of the Taliban with a drone strike but listed his crime as only being an "obstacle to peace". When you start from the outset you are not going to find anything that will cast criticism on Islam then it is bound to create a false narrative and Obama's failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are epic.