President Barack Obama has made the military mission in Afghanistan more complex by planning to withdraw troops too soon, Gen. Jack Keane said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“We have a plan to leave Afghanistan and turn it over to the Afghanis in 2014, and I think that is reasonable,” Keane said. “The president has complicated that by pulling the surge forces out prematurely, in my judgment, and put some of that mission at risk as we move forward.”
Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense, agreed with the four-star general and former Army vice chief of staff.
“If we come home too fast, I think we’ll get hit again in some way that we can’t predict,” Wolfowitz said.
He said the Afghanis and Iraqis have stepped up to their tasks, and the United States should support them for the long run. He likened the conflict to the one in Korea 50 years ago.
“The fact is Korea is a spectacular success story now,” Wolfowitz said. “I think it’s very important that we don’t abandon Iraq, that we don’t abandon Afghanistan, for our own sakes, not for theirs.”
Former U.S. Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said the war on terror will continue because the enemy remains elusive.
“The enemy is not us, the enemy is in a cave somewhere, or in a desert somewhere, trying to attack us, and that’s what we have to keep in mind,” Chertoff said, adding that America has seen “an uptick in homegrown terrorism” since 9/11. “Unfortunately, we don’t always know who our enemies are.”
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