White House: We Are Not Disappointed in Afghanistan Troop Announcement

Dis­ap­poin­ted? No way.

That’s the mes­sage from the White House Thursday re­gard­ing Pres­id­ent Obama’s an­nounce­ment that thou­sands of troops will re­main in Afgh­anistan through the end of his pres­id­ency.

The re­vised troop-with­draw­al timeline goes against Obama’s 2008 cam­paign prom­ises that he’d end Amer­ica’s wars abroad. But in a press brief­ing Thursday af­ter­noon, press sec­ret­ary Josh Earn­est re­peatedly pushed back against sug­ges­tions that the pres­id­ent is dis­heartened by his de­cision to keep U.S. troops in the coun­try through early 2017. After all, the U.S. mil­it­ary has made sub­stan­tial pro­gress there, he said.

“As the next pres­id­ent takes over, that pres­id­ent will be in a much bet­ter po­s­i­tion to con­front the chal­lenges of Afgh­anistan and a much bet­ter po­s­i­tion to ac­com­plish the goal we’d all like to see”: a more stable Afghan gov­ern­ment and na­tion­al se­cur­ity force, Earn­est said.

Flanked at a press con­fer­ence by De­fense Sec­ret­ary Ashton Carter and Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden, Obama re­vealedThursday morn­ing that 9,800 U.S. troops will re­main in Afgh­anistan “for most of 2016.” As soon as the end of next year, there will be a draw­down to 5,500 troops, who’ll be sta­tioned at bases in Kanda­har and Jalalabad and at Ba­gram Air­field. The an­nounce­ment marks a re­vi­sion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plans to keep only Ka­bul-em­bassy-based troops in the coun­try after 2016.

Obama, too, dis­missed the idea Thursday that he’s dis­ap­poin­ted in the post­poned draw­down: “The nature of the mis­sion has not changed, and the ces­sa­tion of our com­bat role has not changed.” U.S. troops haven’t been en­gaged in com­bat since Decem­ber 2014, and the re­main­ing troops have a “nar­row mis­sion” of train­ing Afghan forces and en­ga­ging in coun­terter­ror­ism against al-Qaida, Obama said.

But just be­cause the Amer­ic­an troops in Afgh­anistan aren’t of­fi­cially in a com­bat role doesn’t mean they’re not ever en­gaged with op­pos­i­tion forces. Though no troops are patrolling the moun­tains and val­leys of the coun­try look­ing for the Taliban, Earn­est said, “when a ter­ror threat is de­tec­ted … they can un­der­take an op­er­a­tion to deal with it.”

Dur­ing his press brief­ing, Earn­est wouldn’t val­id­ate re­port­ers’ sug­ges­tions that the pres­id­ent hadn’t lived up to his cam­paign prom­ises, char­ac­ter­iz­ing Obama’s pre-pres­id­en­tial pledge as one “to make the kinds of de­cisions as com­mand­er in chief that were in the core na­tion­al se­cur­ity in­terests of the United States.” Earn­est cited Afgh­anistan’s 2014 elec­tion and the mis­sion to take out Osama bin Laden as evid­ence that the U.S. has made gains in Afgh­anistan.

In a press call shortly after the pres­id­ent’s an­nounce­ment, Earn­est said the pres­id­ent has “ad­vanced the vis­ion” he had in 2008, when he pledged to end the war: The U.S. has been able to re­duce its mil­it­ary pres­ence in the coun­try even as the pres­id­ent “ramp[ed] up” Amer­ic­an in­vest­ment in Afghan se­cur­ity forces’ cap­ab­il­it­ies and anti-al-Qaida op­er­a­tions. And by Earn­est’s telling Thursday, Obama in­her­ited a much tough­er at­mo­sphere in Afgh­anistan in 2009 than he’s leav­ing to the next com­mand­er in chief.

The num­ber of troops com­mit­ted to Afgh­anistan stemmed from the “highest re­com­mend­a­tion” from mil­it­ary lead­ers—and it was the same re­com­mend­a­tion Obama re­ceived from 20-odd House Re­pub­lic­ans who signed a let­ter ur­ging him to main­tain troop levels in the coun­try (in­clud­ing Rep. Joe Wilson, Earn­est quipped, “who called the pres­id­ent a li­ar.”)

Earn­est was also asked wheth­er U.S. com­mand­ers in Afgh­anistan knew that the Doc­tors Without Bor­ders fa­cil­ity that was bombed earli­er this month was a hos­pit­al. A re­port from the As­so­ci­ated Press Thursday af­ter­noon sug­ges­ted Amer­ic­an spe­cial-op­er­a­tions ana­lysts were well aware of its status. Though Earn­est said he hadn’t yet seen the story—it was pos­ted after the brief­ing star­ted—he said it will be con­sidered by the De­part­ment of De­fense in its on­go­ing in­vest­ig­a­tion.