Obama: There’s no guarantee we’ll withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014

“It is a goal to make sure that we are still not engaged in combat operations,” Obama said of the 2014 target date, “but certainly our footprint will have been significantly reduced.”

Obama said he didn’t want to create a situation in which enemy combatants succeed because “they simply waited us out.”…

In announcing the new plan for turning over responsibility, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he didn’t foresee a combat role for allied forces beyond 2014, “provided of course that the security situation allows us to move into a more supportive role.”