Trump declines to do the right thing

Well, that didn't take long.
Someone in the Trump Administration pondered pulling our troops out of Afghanistan, but it appears that it was never taken seriously.

Some voices within the White House, reportedly led by chief strategist Steve Bannon, touted the withdrawal plan while other administration officials were coalescing around a strategy calling for more than 3,900 additional U.S. forces to be sent into Afghanistan.
But the White House has all but abandoned any notion of a partial or complete withdrawal from the central Asian nation, dubbed the “zero option” by Obama administration strategists, with many inside the Pentagon privately noting that the idea was essentially dead on arrival among senior military leaders.

That's not to say that The Donald is satisfied with how things are going in Afghanistan.

Trump startled his advisers by suggesting they fire the war's top military commander, as well as inquiring about getting a piece of Afghanistan's mineral wealth and comparing the country to one of his favorite New York restaurants, according to senior administration officials.
"We aren't winning," Trump complained, according to these officials. "We are losing."
By most measures, the president is correct.
...Trump's own defense secretary, James Mattis, admitted as much to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June.

In 2005, Gen. John Abizaid said that "interesting progress" had been made in Afghanistan.
In 2007, Gen. Dan McNeill said that we were making "significant progress."
In 2010, Gen. David Petraeus talked about the progress made.
In 2013, Gen. John Allen said we were "on the road to winning" in Afghanistan.

We aren't winning.

It's not a "stalemate," as the Pentagon has taken to characterizing it. The latest assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, released in February 2016, shows the situation has been deteriorating, especially since troop levels were lowered significantly after 2011.
Of about 400 districts in Afghanistan, the Taliban controls, contests, or influences 171, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

there are 20 terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Twenty!
If the number of terrorist groups multiply 20 times over, then you are doing it wrong.

Trump can't be seen as losing, so his team is going to come up with a winning strategy...eventually.

Can we win? Probably not, but we can keep kicking the problem down the road.

“Even if you kill all the teenagers, the next generation will join the Taliban,” said Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, a former presidential envoy to Helmand. “The insurgency used to be mostly a business. Now it’s also about revenge.”

When in doubt, do the same thing again and hope it turns out differently.

President Donald Trump’s administration has resuscitated the U.S.-backed efforts to combat the deadly opium crop and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, triggering an increase in interdiction and eradication activity after counternarcotics operations nearly disappeared over the last few years.
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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich
than the previous administration's. Long term planning has not been the forte of the US foreign policy establishment.

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native

Pluto's Republic's picture

@native

Now we just let the Generals handle it.

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IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
detroitmechworks's picture

Her statement that she might, maybe have thought about pulling out of anywhere would be heralded and transcribed for the ages, in memory of her heroic leadership!

Remember how Obama ended the wars! Or said he did, which counts!

The only thing that Trump has done is show the true face of politics. In their quest to destroy him, the MSM just reveals how they've propped up the whole ruddy system for decades.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks
in unison, exposed themselves on purpose. They have displayed their role as agents of the US Deep State openly, for all to see, as if they were proud of it. Why in the world would they have felt it necessary to do this? Why did they all choose to break their cover at this time? Surely they can't be that afraid of a relatively impotent clown such as Trump, can they?

The anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign is primarily a media campaign, and it is clearly an orchestrated campaign. There is nothing spontaneous about it. And while it is true that many people are vehemently opposed to Trump, it is not true that antipathy toward Trump equates to antipathy toward Russia. It's a manufactured hostility toward Russia that we are being fed, intentionally masked by, and conflated with hostility to Trump. And the most amazing thing about it, is that it is so obviously artificial.

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native

@native

Psychopaths typically believe they are so much exceptionally smarter and more exceptional than their victims that, when permitted to freely abuse others/the truth time and time again without consequence, they don't see much point in making any pretense any more. That's entirely predictable, and will also occur in non-psychopathic criminals.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@detroitmechworks

See, if this had been Hillary...

Her statement that she might, maybe have thought about pulling out of anywhere would be heralded and transcribed for the ages, in memory of her heroic leadership! ...

Lol, anything Hillary wants turns out to be because Her paymasters want it, so of course it'd be supported! Although she certainly does go rogue on bribe-raising political campaigns, since Her always knows better about such things than her often-corporate-supplied advisors.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

dervish's picture

it's just a question of when and under what circumstances. For those that haven't seen the movie "War Machine" (Brad Pitt) yet, I highly recommend it.

Btw, need anything from Beirut?

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

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