After years of calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Trump will use a prime-time speech late Monday to lay out his long-awaited strategy for fighting America’s longest war. Trump is expected to accept the Pentagon’s recommendation to send a few thousand more troops to the strife-torn country nearly 16 years after the conflict began.
16 years. Got at least another four under this directive. I kind of like the sound of the 20 Years War. Has a nice Wikipedia ring to it.
Using his personal Twitter megaphone, the president has for years called for a complete withdrawal.
“Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA,” he tweeted in January 2013.
Is there actually an objective or are we just going to stay there for another 50 years? My money is on we're there permanently unless we're forced out.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doesn't sound like a massive shift in policy. Keep in mind we've had as many as 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. I don't think winning this war will happen with 5,000 more troops. Sounds like tactical decision-making is moving closer to the theater of operations. But no clear objectives or timetables. Trump may very well say part of this is by design to keep our enemies confused, but it also does not provide answers to allies who are already nervous about this administration's ability in foreign affairs. You're not going to see a flood of countries clamoring to join the fight.
Trump was diplomatically incorrect in publicly chastising the government of Pakistan, indirectly calling them barbarians. From a long standing tolerance of radical elements within Pakistan, we have a President who is publicly calling them out. Does Trump believe that the government of Pakistan will be shamed into complying? And they don't meet his expectations, are we really willing to cut off aid to the one truly unregulated nuclear power in the Islamic world?
And I'm not sure if I get the wisdom of publicly inviting India to the table. India is definitely on the side of the U.S. in the fight against Islamic Terrorism, but the chemistry with Pakistan brings an explosive variable into the situation. And if I were in the government of India, I would be very skeptical about aligning with an shaky new Administration in a war that's been going on for 16 years. Give it up for the Afghanis. No one plays home field advantage the way they do.
As to the new strategy within Afghanistan, it is difficult for me to divorce the advice of the generals from the execution of the Trump administration. We'll have to see, but Trump doesn't strike me as a savant with respect to military matters.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
Afghanistan where empires go to die. Alexander the Great couldn't control it, Britain couldn't control it, Russia couldn't control it, and America won't control it. Time to declare victory and leave.
MeDotOrg wrote:Trump doesn't strike me as a savant with respect to military matters.
Goodness me, however could you come to such a strange conclusion? Get behind the Commander-in-Chief, you ... you Benedict Arnold, you.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.