President Obama Will Not Be Able To Fulfil His Promise To Bring All U.S. Troops Home From Afghanistan And Iraq

President Bush is seen here in 2008 with Democrat candidate Barack Obama. The Telegraph

Washington Post: Hope fades on Obama’s vow to bring troops home before presidency ends

In meeting after meeting this spring and summer, President Obama insisted that the last American troops in Afghanistan would return home by the end of his presidency, definitively ending the longest war in American history.

Obama and his closest foreign policy advisers laid out the reasons for his military commanders. Keeping as many as 10,000 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely at a cost of as much as $10 billion to $15 billion a year wasn’t politically feasible or financially responsible. There were more pressing domestic priorities that needed money. The country faced bigger threats.

Then, in August, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came in with one more plan to maintain a counterterrorism force of as many as 5,000 troops in Afghanistan to prevent a reemergence of al-Qaeda and to battle Islamic State fighters seeking a foothold in the country. Dempsey’s plan was a quick, ­back-of-the-envelope exercise, according to senior administration officials.

WNU Editor: Wars always end when the other sides realizes that it is hopeless to continue. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan .... President Obama may have wanted to leave these zones of conflict, unfortunately the enemy has different plans. And in places like Libya .... leaving behind a weak government with little support or backing is a guarantee that war and conflict would only continue and spread to its neighbours.

President Obama has only 16 months left in his term .... but I can now easily predict that many of the wars and conflicts that are brewing throughout the Middle East and North Africa will escalate to levels of bloodshed and violence that has not been seen for generations. And in places like Afghanistan, where the Taliban now feel that they are on the verge of seizing and holding territory .... the bloodshed that will occur will shock even those who have been harden by years of war. In this cauldron the next U.S. President will then be faced with a terrible choice .... send in tens of thousands of U.S. troops in all of these conflict zones.... or let the whole place explode. And when making his decision .... will reflect on what did President Obama do to get him (or her) into this mess .... just as President Obama has more than once in the past remarked on President Bush left him Iraq and Afghanistan.