Gen. Jack Keane appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning to discuss the harmful consequences of completely pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.
Keane was responding to a proposal submitted to the White House by military leaders that would keep 10,000 of the currently 30,000 troops in Afghanistan after the U.S. combat mission ends in 2014. It has been suggested that eventually zero troops would remain.
Speaking with Bill Hemmer, Keane warned that the decision to completely withdraw troops would be catastrophic:
"If we do that Afghanistan in 2014 or 2016, what we can expect is the same result- the Taliban forcing themselves on the Afghan people… We are conducting war against the Al Qaeda in Pakistan from bases in Afghanistan- we need the intelligence we gather and we need the footprint and the security to be able to conduct that war successfully. We pull out we put that at risk and that's a direct threat to the United States."
The military is frustrated with pressure to end the war rather than win it, Keane told Hemmer. "They are challenged based on the premise that it's more important to end than it is to win" he said.
