On Thursday, October 15, President Obama officially announced, in contrast to his original plan, he will be prolonging the deployment of nearly 10,000 troops in the Middle East.

In this new plan, Obama stated that, despite the initial plan of bringing back all troops as early as December of this year, we will continue to have all 9,800 U.S. troops there throughout 2016 and “will maintain 5,500 troops” into 2017, leaving it up to the next president whether or not we will continue with our involvement in the Middle East.

The troops will not necessarily be engaging in combat but will be “training Afghan forces and supporting counter-terrorism operations against the remnants of al-Qaeda,” Obama states in his announcement.

This decision was nowhere near easy and took months of convincing. Obama is being heavily criticized for this decision due to its contradiction to earlier statements he made claiming he wanted to end the “Endless War” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The frustration is understandable; however, the president and others feel our assistance there is needed by Afghanistan and its people, as well as ourselves due to the imminent threat al-Qaeda remains to pose against the United States.

So far, the war has lasted fourteen years, beginning just after September 11, 2001.