US military commanders favor keeping troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016 - U.S. News & World Report‎

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the Taliban gaining new ground, U.S. military commanders are arguing for keeping at least a few thousand American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, a move that would mark a departure from President Barack Obama's current policy.

Afghan forces on Wednesday were preparing for what is expected to be a protracted battle to retake Kunduz, a key city that was overrun by the Taliban on Monday, and the U.S. was assisting with at least five airstrikes over the past two days. The struggle highlighted concerns about the apparent fragility of U.S.-trained Afghan security forces.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, including the current trouble in Kunduz, would be taken into account as Obama considers how to proceed with his planned drawdown of troops. Under his existing plan, only an embassy-based security cooperation presence of about 1,000 military personnel would remain at the end of next year.

Obama has made it a centerpiece of his second-term foreign policy message that he would end the U.S. war in Afghanistan and get American troops out by the time he left office in January 2017

Campbell's options all call for keeping a higher-than-planned troop presence based on his judgment of what it would take to sustain the Afghan army and minimize the chances of losing more ground gained over more than a decade of costly U.S. combat, they said.

The Taliban's takeover of Kunduz, a city of 300,000, marked the militants' first capture of a major city since the U.S. invasion ousted their government 14 years ago in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Republican critics of Obama's approach to transitioning from wartime occupation of Afghanistan to full Afghan security control called the fall of Kunduz a predictable consequence of Obama's calendar-based troop reductions.

Speaking on CNN, Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said Wednesday the U.S. needs to maintain a long-term military presence there. He said that if the U.S. were already down to the planned embassy-based security presence of 1,000 troops, the country likely would be suffering a "complete unraveling" like in Iraq last year. - Read More at the usnews

Amid Taliban gains, US military favors longer presence