Obama Chickens Out on Withdrawal Plan, Chooses "Status Quo"

Says the NYT editorial board:

President Obama’s decision to keep roughly 9,800 troops in Afghanistan next year — rather than drawing down to 1,000 troops by the end of 2016, as the White House had once intended — comes amid Taliban advances and other alarming changes in the region. While President Obama’s shift is disturbing and may not put Afghanistan on a path toward stability, he has no good options.

The President’s decision is almost certainly driven by the advances of radical militant Islamist groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, where they have taken advantage of weak governments to seize ever expanding territory. American officials say the Islamic State, the largest and most brutal among them, has a growing presence in Afghanistan, which could allow it to tap into the country’s profitable opium trade.

Keeping a military contingent in Afghanistan in the short term, unnamed officials say, may make the country less hospitable to the Islamic State and fighters who are attracted to its barbaric ideology. It might help the Afghan Army maintain control of the cities at a time when the Taliban is making alarming inroads across the country. It could dissuade more Afghans from joining the refugee exodus...

These are optimistic prospects; the most likely scenario might only be to maintain the security status quo for another year.

If he's lucky...
Expect more American lives to be lost.

It would be foolish to expect the drawdown delay to turn the war around, nor should this decision become an open-ended commitment that costs American taxpayers billions of dollars and takes American lives each year.

(Ouch!  Their concerns, of course, are not necessarily in that order...)

The Obama administration and the Pentagon have been disingenuous, and at times downright dishonest, in their public assessment of the progress American forces and civilians have made in Afghanistan in recent years.

 This is being about as critical, I think, as the NYT editorial board currently can afford.  It's really not good having an untouchable as a commander-in-chief, imho.