After weeks of Pentagon officials dismissing reports of a US drawdown
from Afghanistan as a “rumor,” Vice President Mike Pence is now
confirming that President Trump is indeed in “the process of evaluating” whether to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
This is unsurprising, as since summer, the ever-worsening situation on
the ground in Afghanistan has had officials anticipating that the Trump
Administration would review the 2017 escalation. Some at the Pentagon
have been trying to talk them out of any drawdown.
By late December, there were reports that Trump had already ordered a
drawdown of between 5,000 and 7,000 troops. Pentagon officials spent
weeks denying this, but it was only in recent days that the White House
said no such order had been made.
Having disavowed the order, Pence is now confirming that exactly such an
order is being actively considered. There is no indication of when such
a decision will be made, though the early false reports have aligned
much of Congress against any such drawdown.
The swamp fights back!
The swamp that Trump hired.
… and fires…
….for applause and distraction….
Notice, though, the tangible lack of creature interest in Mattis’ former post; the Swamp is on to that tactic.
The downing of any swamp creature justifies applause; Mattis was a good soldier, but compromised as an Imperial top soldier.
Americans who voted Trump are not easily distracted from MAGA.
Another article here is headlined with the names of Pompeo and Bolton. When they are gone and replaced with something of much lesser evil, let me know. The Bolton hire is simply inexcusable.
Who else was there? The President may only nominate Cabinet officials; the Senate decides whether or not to appoint them. The pool of politically viable candidates is far smaller than most would like to believe. The ‘best’ people don’t fit the normal definition of ‘best’.
Less experienced political players of ‘lesser evil’ like Kelly or Mattis don’t operate at the same level of skill and support as a Pompeo or Bolton. They could last the remainder of the Trump Presidency.
So all that was left was f**king Bolton? C’mon.
Bolton is the top public Neocon. From a certain point of view, there’s no other better qualified candidate.
Unlike the gone Generals, he has no ingrained team player discipline holding him back. Bolton chose the side he’s on, and fights for it well. Odds are, he’s not on Trump’s side.
Its a Machiavellian game; keep your friends close, your enemies closer. Bolton probably memorized “The Prince”. Trump… well… he’s not a memorizer.
Bolton found himself abruptly cut from the North Korea loop when he tried to publicly sabotage NK negotiations by suggesting a Libyan solution. Kelly likely would have seen to it.
Bolton briefly fell back in line, but then may have had a hand in having Canada arrest Huawei’s Meng, which Trump did not know about, but Kelly should have, so Kelly was out on his ear. At the very least, Bolton admitted he knew before the President did.
Bolton was accused of being behind a whisper campaign to ditch Mattis. Mattis is too tough and smart for that. However, Mattis’ loyalties were confused, but military discipline predictable. Mattis was induced to fall on his own sword over the Syrian pullout. Bolton just happened to be in the room during Trump’s fateful call to Erdogan.
In Syria, Bolton is now on the way to ‘fixing’ what he may have had a plan to break. Bolton has stated the U.S. will remain in Al Tanf and is extracting guarantees from Erdogan that Turkey will not attack the Kurds or the U.S. stays. Stay or go in Syria, Mattis is gone from the White House.
It just so happens, Mattis’ replacement, the forever-Boeing guy Shanahan, is an opportunistic sinophobe. Boeing, btw, has very serious conniptions with the proposed new Russian-Chinese (read: Eurasian) CR929 super passenger jet under development. As in, Boeing does not want to face a Eurasian Airbus.
Bolton very much seems to be playing, and deeply part of, a far more complex game.
Also, guess who is next in line to be President, should an unfortunate accident befall both Trump and Pence – faux Progressive Democrat darling and newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Bolton is well placed for overwatch.
The game of knives continues…
Trump’s election rhetoric and promises compared to what we have seen in his first two years only confirms to me that this nation is NOT a democracy but a fascist government run exclusively by and for corporations. Foreign policy decisions are NOT made out of security concerns for the USA, but for massive profits that wars bring. Cut-throat jungle capitalism long ago replaced any semblance of concern for humanity when it comes to the good ol’ USA!
It doesn’t matter what Congress thinks about continuing Afghanistan or not. The AUMF they passed 18 years ago is only an authorization not a declaration. If they want to declare war against Afghanistan let them do so.
Any official suggestion that we’re going to leave makes it all the more urgent that we do leave ASAP. It’s obvious that the Taliban is winning and it’s only a matter of time before the US gets out, the sooner the smarter.
The Taliban isn’t ‘winning’; its a stalemated war of attrition that is their blood versus how much white market money the West is willing to lose there.
Hilarious… “trump evaluating”…with what ?
Opportunistic immorality would be my guess.
Uncommon sense. (The variation of simple common sense that remains when simple common sense becomes …well… uncommon.)
At what point is this a coup? The President wants the troops out, and everybody just ignores it, or hides his pen so he can’t sign the order or what exactly.
The closest the U.S. ever came to an actual coup was the JFK assassination. The legal line of succession kicked in thereafter.
A de-facto coup took place during 9/11 when the COG (Continuity of Government protocols) took over to rule as the senior entity over, but still via, the public face of government. This falls short of an actual coup, as although unelected, the COG shadow government is still integral with the traditional public face of government.
An actual coup would be the Shadow Government or some other domestic actor overtly becoming the public face of government by disposing of the present public face of government and effectively the Constitution of the United States by ending/interrupting the legal governmental succession process.
Coup unlikely to happen as domestic and international credibility and recognition would be hard to square. The obsession with Trump impeachment underlies the critical importance of government legitimacy as more than just optics and firepower.
It already has happened since COG was activated for the sole purpose of making the coup as legitimate looking as possible.
The fact it was a legit system in concept doesn’t mean squat, since it was almost certainly instigated via dubious conditions and should have been shut down and restored us to more normal governance.
Creating anywhere from $19-$29 tril. dollars to cover the fraud of Wall Street banksters and their ilk with complete impunity suggests we’ve lost any say in our own futures.
They’ve effectively made their existence and earnings tax free while forcing the government to borrow money from them at interest.
That’s SOP for the elite. They always “legalize” their crimes before they perpetrate them and use our antiquated and morally bankrupt economic system to strengthen and secure their legacy at any cost.
Actually slamming that passenger jet (more likely a missile) into the Pentagon accounting records office just as Rumsfeld was admitting an audit for where 2.3 trillion dollars went might be necessary, suggests they commit crimes as they go, then cover as needed.
Legitimization is one tool, but not the only one as the Deep State isn’t motivated to, nor could it anticipate, all its crimes beforehand.
This has been going on for so long, even before 9/11, there might not be a ‘normal’ governance to return to.
The COG might have been some sort of evolutionary step, whatever the original ambitions were.
Trump’s instinct would be to watch the bottom line of U.S. global economic warfare. This is a white economy thing.
The sparkliest jewel in the Deep State Raj probably does not sparkle very bright there.
As has been pointed out, there’s little the Pentagon could do there that Eric Prince probably couldn’t do, at far less cost.
After 17 years, what’s to evaluate? It has been an abject failure and we need to leave NOW. Let the CIA hire their own guards for the opium poppy fields, and let someone else run the bases they use for global distribution of their heroin. American troops need to come home from here AND IRAQ!!
The sparkliest jewel in the Shadow Raj is not a failure to the Deep State; Afghani poppies fund black ops and the good evil life well beyond what the white books could afford, let alone record publicly.
The Pentagon was hit in 9/11, obliterating their accounting records office just as US$2.3 trillion in misallocations was about to be audited. $2.3 trillion in fuzzy money, and this was before the era of official unending war.
So, the Pentagon has likely also become very addicted to Afghani black money alongside the CIA. Withdrawal could be as harsh institutionally as drug withdrawal is on a real-life junkie. They seem to be shaken out of their stupor now, though…
FKRS
The story of withdrawal must be see n in the context of negotiations with Taliban. Without withdrawal on the table Taliban refuses to talk to Kabul government. That did not prevent both from going to Moscow to “not talk”. Reality is — either we engage in meaningful negotiations — not endless meetingxs — both parties in Afghanistan have legitimatelly no reasons to talk. This mention of drawdown is either to break ice, and see if a gradual withdrawal plan would induce Taliban to talk. But staying for ever to prop up government not acceltable to most of the country, is a poinless business. And trying to get Taliban on our side in order to stay for ever will not work. And dividing tribes against each other by monry or intrigue — stopped working a while ago.
I have no idea why do we resist accepting simple realities. Like the use of the word Taliban. Talliban litteraly .stands for “students”. Those once sent to Afghanistan to organize or compel tribes to fight against pro-Soviet Kabul government. Long time ago. The Afghan tribes are a loose confederation called Islamic Emirates. And we are negotiating with them. They will not talk to Kabul until we sign withdrawal.
We are in the same spot Soviets were — supporting central government against powerful regional — call it tribal — structure kf the country. Yemen has the same structure.
Inly there we are tryjng to have one strong confederation of Northern tribes, Shia Zaidi Yemen (or our colourful Houthi, name of onei tribe), dominated by the Southers Sunni exiled president Hadi. And on the top of that, we are trying to force Southern tribes into one state, where there are already at least 2-3 historically legitimate inelendelendence seeking entities.
Actually, no. The Soviets never used Afghanistan as a base for opium production and turned money hand over fist.
In a feral and immoral sense, we are far better off than than the Soviets were in Afghanistan, bleeding money from the white market economy but far less of ‘our own’ blood’.
Afghanistan is an improvement over Vietnam that way. The Golden Triangle was never going to sell the loss of American lives.
Negotiations with the Taliban are unaffected by talk of pullout. They would fight hard to evict invaders in any case, and would never take such talk seriously by now.
“inelendelendence” … I’m accustomed by now to being your spell-checker, but this one stumps me. (What is it Bianca, that you can’t/don’t use a spell checker?)
Okay, on to substance.
The CIA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Charlie Wilson created bin Laden and al Qaeda to mess with the Soviets. That plan worked, and the Soviets, like all previous invaders of Afghanistan, left, defeated. That said, the final collapse of the USSR came about primarily from the collapse of oil prices (and yes, from internal contradictions).
With the Soviets gone, and US sponsorship ended, the remnants of al Qaeda in Afghanistan became a roving gang of heavily-armed foreign bandits. When the Afghans had had enough of that, they called on the Taliban, who then mobilized, disposed of the criminals, and assumed governance of Afghanistan.
Bin Laden, with US help, having driven the Soviets out of Afghanistan, became an Afghan national hero, and the Afghans welcomed him to their country, providing a home base slash sanctuary . Bin Laden had by this time become aggrieved with the US, and despite the Taliban prohibiting him from doing so, planned and launched the 911 attacks from Afghan territory.
From which followed the invasion of Afghanistan and the War on Terror.
Seventeen years later — is it eighteen yet? — the war in Afghanistan is the longest in US history,… and lost. And those who predicted from the start — no crystal ball required — that this latest Afghan war would also end in defeat, based on the history of all previous wars in Afghanistan, have been proven right.
So, what is the situation now?
Ego and the gravy train guarantee that generals will never accept defeat. So they want to stay. The MIC will never voluntarily give up their war profits. So they want to stay. And most politicians are unwilling to pay the political price for “losing a war”. So Congressional careerist cowards opt to stay — or opt to stay silent — no matter how fruitless and wasteful.
Even Trump started out that way. It was politically pragmatic for him at the start to give the generals one last shot. But now, the generals have failed yet again — well duh — so common sense and political courage are at last accessible.
So, pragmatism now.
Trump has several factors working in his favor re ending the Afghan clusterf*ck. First, He’s not a “careerist”. He already has buckets of money. So money from a successful political career is not an issue. And second, after eighteen years, the American people are “ready” to lose this war, so there’s substantial political upside and little downside to calling it quits in Afghanistan.
The only thing left is timing. I suggest a year or so more “jaw jaw”, and then a withdrawal coming just before the 2020 elections.
YMMV.
Reality check: Afghan opium more or less funds black ops budgets.
This is about more than ego and graft; its about an entire hundred billion dollar annual black market empire that may be an overall trillion dollar empire by now.
Odds are the trillion dollar seed money from treasury white books to keep Afghanistan producing poppies was more than doubled, easily tripled and certainly more in the 17 years from [2001] to present.
The Wiki Illegal Drug Trade entry uses the U.N World Drug Report from 2005, which cites figures from 2003, a convenient cutoff date. By then the Afghanistan was back in production and invading Iraq taking over the headlines.
Looking for up-to-date illicit drug industry stats from the latest U.N. WDR finds curious avoidance of presenting the illicit drug trade in discrete dollar figures.
An older report from 1998, “Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking,” places the heroin trade at roughly one quarter of a $400 billion dollar annual industry shared by cannabis, cocaine, and synthetics. This was from a time when the Taliban had all but shut down the Afghan poppy fields.
http://www.unodc. org/pdf/technical_series_1998-01-01_1.pdf
So, if they’re artfully hiding the financial numbers now, those numbers must be very significant.
Evaluate faster. Much faster. And none of that moving target date garbage either.
I would rather trump do what he thinks best . rather than pay any attention to his intelligence agencies or the pentagon .