President Obama’s statement is troubling on two counts, the first of which is obvious: the extension of U.S. military involvement. The second is that President Obama framed the extension in either an unsupported or misleading way. He said, “Our forces therefore remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions — training Afghan forces, and supporting counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. He reiterated that statement in the same speech.

In 2010 then CIA Director Leon Panetta said that there were 50 to 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and maybe less. The President made no claim that the number of al Qaeda in Afghanistan has grown. He either needed to make that argument or be straight-forward about the real task — which appears to be: fighting the Taliban, a group without international ambitions, and hence a much different threat from al Qaeda.