Mitch Perry
It doesn’t happen very often, but nobody can accuse of Marco Rubio opposing everything that Barack Obama does on the foreign policy front.
The Florida Republican Senator and presidential candidate said today that he welcomes Obama’s announcement that the U.S. will maintain much of its current level of 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through the end of 2016, breaking a previous vow to remove all troops from that war torn nation by the end of his presidency. He said that number would drop to 5,500 at the end of next year or in early 2017.
“Our presence in Afghanistan should be dictated by battlefield conditions, which are impossible to predict more than a year in advance.”
The Taliban have been gaining ground in Afghanistan, recently capturing the city of Kunduz. That was their first capture of a major city in Afghanistan since 2001. The Taliban did pull back from Kunduz earlier this week.
Rubio criticized Obama for announcing that he will still bring home thousands of U.S. troops before he leaves office in January of 2017.
“As with President Obama’s premature withdrawal of the forces he announced as part of the surge in 2009, making decisions regarding our military commitment in this way only signals weakness to our enemies and encourages them to wait us out,” he said in a statement. “Given the continued threats to the Afghan government, President Obama should maintain at least the current level of forces through the end of his presidency. This would allow the next president to reassess the situation as it exists at the end of 2016 and make decisions about our commitment to Afghanistan going forward based on the best military advice at that time.”
The president says that those 5,500 troops, along with contributions from NATO allies, will provide enough power to protect the force and continue the advisory and counterterrorism missions.
Rubio says the U.S. must not sell out its Afghan partners.
“America’s history in Afghanistan, as well as recent events in Iraq and Syria, show that when the U.S. fails to lead and allows states to collapse, we ultimately undermine our own security,” he says.” Our men and women in uniform who have served in Afghanistan have fought valiantly to eliminate those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, prevent terrorists from training and plotting attacks with impunity, and give the Afghan people the opportunity for a better future. Even though the Afghan government now bears primary responsibility for their country’s security, we cannot turn our backs on our Afghan partners at this critical moment.”
