Obama: Afghanistan won’t be ‘source’ of future terrorist attacks

President Obama vowed that Afghanistan will not be a source of terrorist attacks in the future, in an address just a week before the U.S. combat mission in the country ends.

Speaking to U.S. troops stationed at the Marine Corps Base in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, Obama said their service had given Afghanistan a chance “to rebuild its own country. “We are safer,” Obama said. “It’s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again.”

U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan for 13 years and counting, but are scheduled to completely leave the country at the end of 2016, when Obama leaves office.

By the end of this year, Obama had planned to have just 9,800 troops in Afghanistan. It’s not clear if that target will be met, but the White House this month said there will be fewer than 15,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of the year.

There are significant doubts, however, about how safe Afghanistan will be after U.S. troops leave the country, and whether it will again become an easy home for terrorists.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and the Republican who Obama defeated for the presidency in 2008, was in Afghanistan on Thursday.

He told Fox News on Thursday that Afghanistan could turn into another Iraq after the departure of U.S. troops. Sunnit extremists with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have overtaken much of Iraq, and have executed several Western hostages.  “We’re going to see the same movie we saw in Iraq,” McCain told Fox.

He urged that Obama reverse course and leave behind a larger “stabilizing force” in Afghanistan. More at The Hill