On Saturday the government collapsed over an effort to extend the deployment of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan.
Late that year, when his party's popular president, Ronald Reagan, proposed to extend the deployment of the Marines in Beirut, McCain was one of just 27 Republican representatives to object.
In Seoul, South Korea's Parliament voted Friday to extend the deployment of the country's 650 troops in Iraq for another year, amid protests outside the Parliament building.
Also on Friday, Mr. Obama extended the deployment of some 1,200 National Guard troops who are backing up immigration agents along the Southwest border.
Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday extended the deployment of National Guard troops at the Mexico border due to a spike in the number of unaccompanied minors entering the country.
The Defense Department, which was predicting in early May that troop levels would be down to thirty thousand by the end of the summer, extended the deployment of battle-weary divisions indefinitely.
And some officials said the attacks could have come within days, noting that the German Parliament will soon take up a politically fraught debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan.
Abu Sayyaf members, sheltered by sympathetic residents, continue to operate in the interior's dense forests, even as the United States recently extended the deployment of troops in the southern Philippines.
With the Parliament scheduled to vote in October on whether to extend the deployment, security officials worry that Germans, either in Afghanistan or at home, could become targets for attacks.
Mr. Gates has already extended the deployment of a force of 3,200 marines in southern Afghanistan by one month, essentially until winter arrives and closes many of the country's mountain passes and remote villages.
