It’s not really done, because it’s still rife with muzzie terrorists, but our participation is now a “support” role.
From Fox News.
……The 13-year occupation by the United States and its NATO allies started with airstrikes against Usama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors after the 9-11 terror attacks and ended Sunday with a ceremony at the joint-military headquarters in Kabul.
As part of the ceremony, Gen. John Campbell, commander of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, rolled up and sheathed the green-and-white ISAF flag and unfurled the flag of the new international mission, called Resolute Support.
“Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and Afghanistan, Campbell told an audience of Afghan and international military officers and officials, as well as diplomats and journalists.
The passing of 2014 will not see the complete departure of American Soldiers from Afghanistan, as the ISAF will transition to a supporting role with 13,500 soldiers, almost 11,000 of them American, starting Jan. 1.
ISAF was set up after the U.S.-led invasion as an umbrella for the coalition of about 50 nations that provided troops and took responsibility for security across the country.
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who took office in September, promptly signed bilateral security agreements with Washington and NATO allowing the enduring military presence. The move has led to a spike in violence as the Taliban have claimed it as an excuse to step up operations aimed at destabilizing his government.
In all, 2,224 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally, out of roughly 3,500 foreign troop deaths. The mission peaked at 140,000 troops in 2010 with a surge ordered by Obama to remove the insurgents from strategically important regions, notably in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban had its capital from 1996 to 2001.
Obama recently expanded the remit of the U.S. forces remaining in the country, allowing them to extend their counter-terrorism operations to the Taliban, as well as Al Qaeda, and to provide ground and air support for the Afghan forces for at least the next two years.
The first Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, turned out to be a perfidious, self-absorbed little crapweasel.
Since we went in and kicked Taliban/Al Qaeda ass, the track record of the Afghan leadership has been less than stellar. Afghanistan’s Intelligence Agency has been pretty chummy with the Taliban; communicating with them about the regime change after the withdrawal of American Forces. The government has a habit of freeing Taliban cutthroats from prison, so that they can pick up where they left off.
This will not end well. The Taliban and Al Qaeda will take this as a green light to regroup. Barky ran the war with a dicked-up ROE, pussified doctrine, and portraying the enemy as less of an enemy. Why, the Taliban even got a nice office in Doha. They are giddy with anticipation. They can hardly wait.
You don’t negotiate with the enemy, you annihilate them. You don’t give them office space, you crush them to the point where they will never again have the ability to do harm.
The whole point of going into Afghanistan was not just to get Bin Laden, (even though he escaped to Pakistan), but to defeat one of the enemies responsible for the 9/11 atrocities. They have not been defeated, they’ve been propped up by a SCOAMF who is totally incapable of making good decisions.
If America really wanted to win, we’d have gone all out as we did in WWII and dedicated our efforts to a complete and unequivocal defeat of every single Islamic state in existence. Instead, terrorist leaders and their cells thrive unabated. The State Department, Homeland Security Department, FBI, Department of Justice, and the White House occupants for the last 20 years, have done little to confront the threat of Islamic terrorism. Read excerpts from Steve Emerson’s American Jihad, to get a good understanding.
Remember those who gave their lives to rid the world of some of the worst excrement.
Whatever happens, one thing is for sure; as long as there is Islam there will be terrorism.