Though Republicans were generally supportive of President Obama’s Tuesday announcement on his administration’s decision to keep 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2015, Rep. Peter King was not one of them.
The Obama administration had originally planned to cut the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 5,500 by the end of 2015. The change in policy was announced Obama met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House Tuesday.
However, the troops are expected not to be in a combat role capacity. The combat role that ended late last year will remain over, Obama emphasized. The New York Republican said this emphasis showed Obama as being “a reluctant warrior … or this uncertain trumpet.”
“If he’s vacillating in Afghanistan or vacillating against [the Islamic State] by saying what he’s not going to do, are other countries really willing to go out on the line for us?” King asked. “What he is doing is sending a very uncertain signal.”
“It’s not the kind of strength that the commander in chief or the leader of the free world should be showing,” King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Newsmax Tuesday after Obama’s announcement. “The commander in chief should never tell the enemy what we’re not going to do.”
Obama said in a joint news conference with Ghani Tuesday that the U.S. “will maintain our current posture of 9,800 troops through the end of this year,” adding that most troops from Afghanistan will be removed by the end of 2016 according to U.S. plan.
