February 25, 2014

Manchin Applauds Obama Decision to Prepare Troop Withdrawal in Afghanistan

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) today issued the following statement after President Obama ordered the Pentagon to begin preparing U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

“I applaud President Obama’s decision to prepare for a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and I hope he will choose this course regardless of who succeeds President Karzai in Afghanistan’s April elections. Through the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, we have accomplished much of what we set out to do in Afghanistan: Osama bin Laden is dead, extremist networks in Afghanistan have been disrupted so that they are no longer a credible international threat and the Afghan Security Forces have received training and equipment for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, American money and military might cannot solve the problems that remain. They cannot make President Karzai a friend of the United States, they cannot prevent insider attacks against our troops, and they cannot root out the corruption that thrives on American tax dollars. It is time to bring our troops home from our nation’s longest war.”

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