President Obama marked the end of combat operations in Afghanistan with a trip to a joint military base in New Jersey, where he thanked the troops for their sacrifice and said every one of them should be proud of what they accomplished there.
“Our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over this month, and our war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end,” he said during remarks at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a base that served as a launching point for deployments to Afghanistan.
The president was careful not to suggest that the U.S. military’s job was done in Afghanistan, noting that thousands of troops will remain to carry out operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda targets.
Instead, he ticked off a number of successes — “decimating al Qaeda’s core,” killing Osama bin Laden, preventing terrorist attacks in the U.S., helping train Afghan forces and allowing the country’s citizens to hold a historic election.
Americans, he said, are “free and safe over here because you’re willing to serve over there,” he said. “That’s the selfless character of our military — not just at this time of year but every year.”
“You never stop serving,” he continued on a lighter note. “You’re like Santa in fatigues, although I bet one of those C-130s over there is a little more efficient than one of Santa’s sleighs.”
The joint military base located in New Jersey’s Burlington County is home to more than 38,000 active-duty, reserve and Guard servicemembers and their families.
The base is also a launching point for sending servicemen and women to West Africa to respond to the Ebola crisis.
“Ultimately we will have saved thousands of lives because of you,” Obama said, referring to the Ebola outbreak and the U.S. military’s work in Liberia.
