Having reached the 8,600 troop goal in Afghanistan ahead of schedule, US officials now say they believe that at least 4,000 troops will remain there through the November election. One official said they believed the cuts are now driven by the election, and not Afghanistan.
President Trump has been said to be keen to get troop levels down before the vote, but was so ahead of schedule he would’ve been able to finish it well ahead of November. Instead, it seems like he wants to keep troops, so as to avoid being accused of losing Afghanistan in his first term.
This may be his best of both worlds scenario, allowing him to take credit for the drawdown in the vote, and still have enough troops present to reverse the process and reescalate the war in the future, after it is a political liability.
These comments from the Pentagon reflect complaints that they don’t think the conditions of the pullout were met, nor were they likely to since they didn’t appear to support the pullout in the first place. They are now going to keep criticizing the drawdown, however incomplete, and hope the war once again picks up pace.
The real problem here is that trump is very weak and he is getting zero support from the uniparty war mongers: GOP with liz cheney, haley, romney are sniping at him and providing no support-obviously war mongering dimocrats snipe at will.
The “system” is completely broken and trump and his cabinet to include kushner are not capable of dealing with it.
“zero support”…really ? Didn’t hear a peep, or tweet from trump on the Afghan war ending amendment. You have been conned.
I’m not ok with anything haley, cheney, romney come up with; trump needs a lot of help and he is not getting it.
None of them came up with the amendment to end the war, and authorization. When this amendment came up 2 weeks or so ago, one might think that a president whom wanted to “end endless wars” might say something about it, instead of talking for half an hour how he didn’t wanna spill water on his tie.
Rand Paul seemed to be trying to help him. Imagine if Trump had openly supported Paul. That vote would have looked different. But he did the same on previous attempts at stopping our warring so he doesn’t seem interested in help.
Valid comments, wars, sullivan; it is extremely frustrating to be backed into a corner to be seen as defending anything trump does but when opportunist vultures such as the cretins haley, cheney, romney jump on, it does become a tad irritating when they are agitating for moar war.
As I said before, trump is extremely weak and his reduction of troops or non attacks are, to put it charitably, half assed and half hearted.
Thus, it “might” help if he got some support or encouragement. I hope I never ever again get backed into this corner but then again, we have biden, the cretin hillary out there so whatever.
For some reason, trump supporters seem to think trump is the first pol to promise no new wars, or ending unpopular ones. They all do it.
One thing trump knows, his base will be in line. He uses this to silence GOP criticism. What he doesn’t do, is use this popular support to end the endless wars he so “wishes” to end.
All we are left with is the actual record, and non-record. There were 7500 troops in a “non-combat” role when he took office. He deployed 8000 more, and changed the mission to combat, he quadrupled air strikes. It is hard to celebrate a drawdown he could have produced 3 1/2 years ago. Especially since, because election, he is simply kicking the can down the road, and, completely ignoring the congressional support he does have to end the war and go home.
As for the non-record, with no end to the war, there is no way for us to know how much that “drawdown” is just a transfer to mercenaries.
For these reasons, in an election year, trumps “peace train”, has proven to be a train wreck. I’m not surprised, I heard his speeches, he was never, and never will be antiwar.
Some amount of “terrorist activity” in Afghanistan is an essential element to argue to retain the US military there. Whenever Trump demands that troop numbers be reduced, such activity will mysteriously increase.
Timetable is driven by opium poppy bloom and harvest season….and nothing else.