Iraq Crisis Builds Bipartisan Support for Keeping U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Senator Cotton Says - usip

The revival by ISIS of a brutal Islamist offensive in Iraq makes it urgent to prevent a similar reversal in the Afghan war—and is increasing congressional support for President Obama to maintain U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said today.

The U.S. government “should commit now—today—to keeping at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan until 2017, and perhaps beyond,” to prevent the Taliban and their Islamist militant allies from re-establishing control over wide swaths of the country, Cotton said in a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace. President Obama said in May he would end the U.S. combat and advisory role with Afghan forces by the time he leaves office at the start of 2017.

Cotton said ISIS guerrillas’ seizure of much of Iraq, four years after Obama ended the main U.S. military mission there, has moved public and congressional opinion to favor scrapping the fixed date for a final pullout from Afghanistan. His remarks came a day after Obama’s nominee as defense secretary, Ashton Carter, told Cotton and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States should “finish the job” in Afghanistan. Carter said he would “recommend … changes (in the pullout plan) to the president” if security conditions in Afghanistan deteriorate.

Before his speech, Cotton met at the Institute with former US officials and specialists on Afghan and security policy to discuss Afghanistan, including the troop pullout by 2017. “The argument for a change (in the pullout plan) is strengthened by two factors that have changed since the president made his decision” last year, said former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, one of those in the discussion. They are the collapse of state control in much of Iraq, and a general deepening of Islamist militant threats caused by the growth of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

A difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that “the Afghan people and governmentwant this role” by the U.S. military, said Khalilzad, who served as ambassador to both Afghanistan and Iraq. The government of Ghani and Abdullah has asked the United States to lead the international community in sustaining financial and other help for Afghanistan for the coming decade.

“Afghanistan is not hopeless,” Cotton said in his speech. “Afghans, Americans, and international partners on the contrary have made tremendous gains there—gains that have made the country safer and more secure, while giving millions of Afghans a chance to live safe, healthy, honorable, and meaningful lives. America is safer today because [of] our efforts in Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan is an enduring focus of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which “has been there since 2002, working on initiatives to counter violent extremism, to strengthen the rule of law, [and] support civil society organizations working to prevent and mitigate violent conflict,” said the Institute’s new president, Nancy Lindborg, who introduced Cotton. His speech and discussion at the Institute was co-sponsored by the Washington-basedAlliance in Support of the Afghan People, a non-partisan group that advocates continued U.S. and international help for Afghanistan.  Read More at  "America is safer today because [of] our efforts in Afghanistan."