White House press secretary Josh Earnest declined to say how long U.S. troops, which will soon number more than 3,500, would remain in the Middle East to help train soldiers to fight the Islamic State.
“I wouldn’t put a timeline on it other than to say that the president has acknowledged since last year that this won’t be a short-term proposition,” Earnest told reporters during his daily briefing.
The White House said Wednesday it would add another 450 troops to the effort, which puts the new number of non-combat troops serving in the area at 3,510. The increase is meant to allow for faster training of Iraqi security forces in Anbar province. They will will work out of al-Taqaddum Air Base to position themselves to try to retake Ramadi, a city in Iraq roughly 70 miles west of Baghdad.
Obama, Earnest said, has previously said that he does not expect the fight against the Islamic State to be resolved by his last day in office, and said it’s something he expects the next president “will have to deal with.”
“The president built the coalition so the U.S. wouldn’t be in a position of carrying all this weight all on our own, and the president has been very clear that the efforts of the United States and our coalition partners will be to support the Iraqi people,” he said. “We will not do for them what they won’t do for themselves — and that will be a central tenant of this policy-making process.”
