President Obama has announced that has many as 5,500 troops will remain in Afghanistan through 2017. That's a far cry from the promises of the Obama administration in 2012.

Then, during the vice presidential debates, Joe Biden emphatically stated that there will be no troops whatsoever in Afghanistan after 2014:

That's why with 49 of our allies in Afghanistan, we've agreed on a gradual draw down so we're out of there by the -- in the year 2014. My friend [Paul Ryan] and the governor [Mitt Romney] say it's based on conditions which means it depends. It does not depend for us. But we are leaving. We are leaving in 2014. Period.

There was just one problem: ISIS, Obama's "jayvee team." As troops were slowly pulled out of the Middle East, the Islamic terrorists took over. And now the administration has realized its error --- its own "jayvee" move, if you will -- and is scrambling to make up for the heavy losses. Obama's latest announcement  entails that the current U.S. force of 9,800 will remain in Afghanistan until 2016, eventually thinning out to 5,500 by 2017 when the next president of the United States will have to figure out what to do.

Sen. John McCain commented on Obama's decision Thursday, saying:

The bottom line is that 5,500 troops will only be adequate to conduct either the counterterrorism or the train and advise mission, but not both. All of us want the war in Afghanistan to be over, but after 14 years of hard-fought gains, the decisions we make now will determine whether our progress will endure and our sacrifices will not have been in vain.