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President Barack Obama Approves Greater Role For Troops In Afghanistan While Ripping Gun Control Opponents

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 01:01 PST, Jun 17, 2016

President Barack Obama approved a greater role for troops in Afghanistan. U. S. troops will now have greater mobility to accompany Afghan troops on operations against the Taliban. It will not give troops a greater ability to engage the enemy.

Yahoo News reported that a senior defense official, who chose to remain anonymous, said that it will allow for greater U.S. air power, especially close air support. The official said that it wasn’t a blanket order to target the Taliban.

President Barack Obama is using this change in policy to redefine America’s role in Afghanistan and a grinding conflict that America’s allies have already wrapped up their role in and turned the mission over to Afghan troops. It also comes at a time when the President is trying to decide whether or not to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan from 9,800 to 5,000.

Retired generals and senior diplomats have been urging the president to forgo the plan because they believe this could undermine Afghanistan’s ability to fight the Taliban. Under the current directive, American forces are only able to deploy into the field with special forces. Under the new directive, General John Nicholson, the U. S. commander in Afghanistan, will have the ability to deploy American forces any time he believes that they will have a strategic effect on the battlefield. This is a departure from current policy which restricts American forces’ ability to engage the enemy in Afghanistan.

ABC News reported that President Obama met with families of the victims of the Orlando shooting. After the meeting, he ripped into gun control opponents. He said that opponents of gun control measures should go to Orlando and meet with the families and explain their positions.

Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Marco Rubio accompanied President Obama to Orlando to meet with the families of the victims. Obama expressed his frustration over the the issue of gun control.

“If in fact we want to show the best of our humanity, then we’re all going to have to work together at every level of government across political lines to do more to stop killers who want to terrorize us.”

The president promised to continue the fight against groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. While in Orlando, the president and vice president visited a memorial site for the victims where they placed bouquets of 49 white roses, one rose for each of the victims.

Barack Obama criticized the fact that the shooter was able to easily obtain what he called assault weapons even though the AR-15 used in the attack is not an assault weapon.

“The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies common sense. Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense.”

The Atlantic reported that Donald Trump implied that Barack Obama was somehow complicit in the terrorist attack in Orlando. Trump believed that Obama was at least turning a blind eye to terrorism. Obama criticized Trump while explaining his reluctance to use the term “radical Islam.”

Trump responded that President Barack Obama put the interests of other groups ahead of the American people, and that the President was basically guilty of treason. Trump’s comments have led critics to believe that he is accusing President Obama of putting the interests of the United States over the interests of American citizens.

[Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

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