On Wednesday, President Trump made a new comment on the pullout of Afghanistan, saying that it is now his intention to have all remaining US troops out of Afghanistan by Christmas. That’s substantially sooner than previous statements on the matter.
This seems to be a very recent policy change. Just hours before Trump’s comments, the national security adviser said that there would still be 2,500 US troops left in Afghanistan by early 2021. This is roughly in line with previous comments on the matter.
Trump reinforced early withdrawal plans in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday. “We’re down to 4,000 troops in Afghanistan. I’ll have them home by the end of the year. They’re coming home, you know, as we speak. Nineteen years is enough. They’re acting as policemen, OK? They’re not acting as troops,” he said.
Troop cuts in October and November are intended to get troop levels to around 4,500 in November, a goal that the Trump Administration has pushed for some time. With troop cuts ahead of schedule, even more cuts were possible.
Having the last troops out of Afghanistan by Christmas puts even more pressure on the Afghan government and Taliban to make good on efforts to make a deal, at least on a framework, or risk a new round of violence.
I agree with supremeborg.
Today is the 19th anniversary of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, our longest war. When Trump took office, the war had raged for 15+ years.
Trump’s role has been particularly vicious. Three months into his term came news that the massive ordnance air blast (MOAB), largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, had been exploded — for the first time — in Nangarhar Province,
Hamid Karzai, former Afghan president, called use of MOAB “the iinhuman amd most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons.”
Remember that Trump in 2015 advocated killing families along with ISIS fighters. And he has carried out that doctrine in his warmaking in Asia and Africa.
George W. Bush began bombing the Afghans on October 7, 2001, and the U.S. has been terrorizing and killing them ever since.
Bush’s — and later Obama’s and Trump’s — Afghan war has always been illegal:
* Congress never declared war on Afghanistan or authorized war on the Afghans. A vague resolution of 9/14/01 purporting to let Bush fight those he found responsible for the terrorism three days earlier did not even mention Afghanistan.
* Moreover, it has been a war of aggression. Making no effort to settle differences peacefully — as directed by the UN Charter — Bush attacked the Afghans.. They did not attack us.
Some 4,000 Americans have been killed in the war — which is taking the lives of well over 3,000 Afghan civilians a year.
Why aren’t the candidates asked about that war? And the lawless interventions in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and African countries? And the increased danger of war with Iran, Venezuela, China, Russia?
If I were a moderator: “Mr. Biden, in 2002 as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you supported attacking Iraq. How can we expect you to bring us peace? Or will you start more wars?”
“President Trump, you’ve had four years to get us out of wars. Instead,you’ve gotten us involved more deeply, civilian tolls have soared, and we seem to be entering a nuclear arms race. Why?”
“Why aren’t the candidates asked about that war?”
Because we can’t ask them to talk about any meaningful, substantive issues. If they did that, it would shed light on the corruption inherent in political power, it would show that the empire has no clothes, and that, my friend, is simply not allowable.
Comes down to who gets to ask and whether it is something they want discussed. So there’s the answer.
“Remember that Trump in 2015 advocated killing families along with ISIS fighters. And he has carried out that doctrine in his warmaking in Asia and Africa.”
Plus he advocated torture, much worse than waterboarding. And he wanted to fill up GITMO. Add that to his suggesting we should execute Edward Snowden. But never mind. He is a man of peace and liberty.
None of Trump’s threats were actually carried out.
Except the pullout threat was partially acted upon.
But some of his other campaign promises were. Like his blind loyalty to Israel and him repaying Adelsons millions with his attempted destruction of Iran via economic sanctions. Or his vow to spend lavishly on the military. He didn’t promise a space force so I guess that would be a bonus to the military. If I thought he was actually anti-war and wasn’t playing the particular room he is in, he’d have my vote in a minute.
No bona-fide antiwar candidate would ever be let near the reigns of power in the duopoly. Ron Paul was reduced to a GOP sideshow. Unexpected Democratic upstart Bernie Sanders, was set back in his place, hard and totally out of the news cycle now.
Trump’s ambiguity, is what got him past gatekeeper radars. Trump’s flip-flop on being the honest broker in the Middle East, won him the unwavering support of at least the Christian half of the Israel lobby, which has kept his Presidency alive. Everyone else, cannot stand their ground and deserts Trump at the slightest mis-tweet, only to come crawling back because there is no other.
Real wars worth fighting are lost on such lack of resolve. One is either against wars of aggression or one is not, one is either for the wellbeing of America and the world, or one is not, then must act accordingly to the best chances of achieving that outcome.
Popular participation in American politics is done in political party grassroots organizations; its these partisans who decide for the rest who’s electable.
These organizations can be captured, but it takes a fair amount of money and time to do so on a national scale. The duopoly parties are thus careful about who is allowed into critical organizing and leadership roles, to prevent any undesired upsets of favoured sons and daughters..
The only reason Trump got in, is that the GOP is far less rigorous in policing its coalition than the Democrats, The GOP was also, at the time of Trump’s nomination, a sunset party with an aging and dying base. Trump was acceptable as the best man to lead the GOP into oblivion..
Trump’s ambiguity is what spooks everyone, from Main Street to Behind Closed Doors. However, Trump has consistently delivered no new wars and made attempts at withdrawing from the ongoing wars.
Trump’s supposed bungling of COVID-19 was a bonus; people were always going to die, but a medical police state was not supported from the White House and Trump has been pushing instead reopening the economy.
No economy, populism dies. Only MIC billionaires will survive a prolonged lockdown era.
If its a choice between ambiguity and a confirmed, longstanding war criminal like Biden, I’d have to go with the ambiguity of Trump.
Even as a GOP man, that Republicans had to support up to a point, Trump barely survived having few if any hardcore supporters in Congress and the Senate. Without a strong presence in Congress and the Senate, third parties at the Presidential level aren’t viable.
Biden, is surrender to forever war, medical police statism, that he has always openly supported and abetted, and a sped-up slide into ever more real dystopia.
Trump buys obstructionism against the worst tendencies of the Globalist war machine using America. There is no more effective way to send both an antiwar message and protest vote, and also have a halfways chance of having that stick, than voting Trump.
For the haters… well, If the system is so awful, and Trump so bad, well, the system deserves Trump.
“If its a choice between ambiguity and a confirmed, longstanding war criminal like Biden, I’d have to go with the ambiguity of Trump.’
Biden voted against the 1991 invasion and voted for the 2003 invasion. Trump said “I guess so” on the 2003 invasion and said of the 1991 invasion: “I wish the first time it was done correctly”.
Trump on nukes: “If we have them, why can’t we use them”.
“In his first address before the United Nations, an organization dedicated to maintaining global peace, Donald Trump delivered a warlike speech threatening to annihilate North Korea, criticizing Iran’s “pursuit of death and destruction,” belittling his enemies, and, naturally, bragging about his election victory.”
Biden on Assange: A “high tech terrorist”
Trump on Snowden: “a spy who should be executed”
I could bring up torture, GITMO and countless other things but you’d still say there is a difference between these two assclowns so what’s the point?
Claiming there’s no difference is scam thinking and always has been, election after election. But too many people have come to believe that scam and forgotten to make demands from an ever-weakening centre-undecided voter pool.
You’re simply encouraging defeatism in the centre, undecided vote, encouraging people to not vote at all or waste votes on the fringe, to the delight of the coalition partisans.
The centre undecided should be looking for the best deal that can win, which is Trump-Pence.
The critical points are, Trump started no new wars and attempts to pull out from the existing wars are ongoing. Trump is not cheerleading descent into a COVID-19 medical police statism, but rather encouraging personal responsibility and reopening the economy, no masks attached.
Economic freedom is as critical as freedom from war.
Off Guardian has an entire section devoted to COVID-19 debunking.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/13/the-covidian-cult/
Trump shrugged off COVID-19 in two days with proper medical care. Effective and fast treatments exist for COVID-19, an illness no more lethal than the flu even when there is still no vaccine.
Threats to annihilate North Korea and Iran, cannot be reasonably met, but are useful for look-tough rhetoric balancing off his good relationship with Putin and refusal to get toxic with Russia.
Assange and Snowden are far from beloved by the national security establishment. Securing the overall neutrality of the Deep State even as a few of their worst examples, like Epstein, had their plugs pulled for good, aided in Trump’s political survival.
The fig leaf notion that a small-b billionaire real estate developer like Trump and his sidekick, Pence, an ex-governor of Indiana, are in any way equivalent to Biden, who’s voted for and supported America’s forever wars, and Harris, a proven dedicated police statist, is farcifal.
Biden is a 9/11 forever war convert. His 1991 opposition to a Republican war was just politics as usual, just like he went along with Obama’s new wars despite expressing token misgivings never again repeated.
https://inthesetimes.com/features/joe-biden-iraq-war-vote-democratic-primary-2020.html
Biden opposed letting in Vietnamese boat people as well as bussing black schookids, Rewarding him for his years of service to the Deep State is totally wrong, and sends the message that Hilary was a one-off, the Deep State can deliver on promised favours.
Would be anti-war anti-state radicals who set the bar to high for small successes, have only fostered incremental failure election after election. Partisans never have to deliver the best deals to win a large and motivated centre vote, just seek power.
People like yourself are perpetuating a self-exculpatory blame the victim scam. its easy to be a radical pretender to freedom and humanitarianism, promoting a worldview that can never, and never has to, deliver positive results. Indeed, pastiche noble failure is self-reinforcing.
For your ilk, its always the American people and their Great Leader of the moment at fault, to hate on and troll with bourgeois insousciant decadence, for not having unattainable purity and perfection radical anti-war anti-state poseurs feign possessing.
In the meantime, the world burns ever hotter with wars and the working poor starve down in an unprecedented global globalist economic lockdown.
Trump in spite of even himself made a positive and good difference in a world that was going to hell fast in 2016. He obstructed the worst possible outcomes of the old regime.
And that is why people like yourself, have joined his opponents in Never Trumping. You fear not only change for the better but thwarting of the Reset, because that totally invalidates your worldview of antihuman political defeatism..
“Economic freedom is as critical as freedom from war.”
True. Which is why economic authoritarians like Trump and Biden shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near political power.
Which would be great if that were a choice, but realistically, its not.
Trump or Biden will be the President in 2021, and that is the only outcome voters can affect.
The last third party candidate to make a splash was Ross Perot, and the outcome remained the same; either a Democrat or Republican would become President.
“COVID-19, an illness no more lethal than the flu”
Er, no.
For people under 70, the CDC-estimated infection fatality rate is LOWER than the flu (in the 50-70 age range, it’s about as fatal as the low-end flu season; it’s orders of magnitude lower for those under 50).
But in people over 70, it’s five times as likely to be fatal as a BAD flu season.
But infection fatality rate is only one piece of the lethality equation. Another is how communicable the disease is. Typical seasonal flu has an R0 of about 1.2 persons infected by each infected person. The lowest R0 estimate I’ve seen for COVID-19 is twice as high. More than twice as many people getting infected means more than twice as many people dying.
Not necessarily; the same victim pool is shared by both the flu and COVID-19 while the data is collected differently.
There aren’t suddenly twice as many 70+ potential victims to go around just because COVID-19 shows up. One or the other illness will get a kill if it infects a susceptible victim, especially if the patient receives substandard medical care.
Also, the flu is NOT nearly as aggressively tracked as COVID-19. Influenza victims usually show up in the stats only after they have been hospitalized AND tested positive for the actual flu. No-one is contact tracing for the flu or demanding constant tests for flu exposure. Doctors aren’t obligated or incentivized to report influenza cases.
We still don’t know how many people actually get the flu, just estimates postulated from confirmed cases.
A claim that COVID-19 has a more serious R0 than the flu, would require equivalent R0 testing protocols for influenza as for COVID-19. The claim that COVID-19 is no more serious than the flu, is a conservatively accurate assessment.
…
“Today is the 19th anniversary of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, our longest war. When Trump took office, the war had raged for 15+ years.”
The Korean War is 70 years old and counting.
Hasn’t been a hot war all that time though. Nitpicking.
Indeed. There may be a lot of troops over there supporting the drug, prostitution, alcohol, gambling, and golf industries, but nobody is being killed or killing anyone on a daily/regular basis. Big difference despite the truth that the war has never truly ended. But Trump has done more to bring it to an end than any other president.
The worst of the Afghan body count is over, MOAB was just a propaganda photo op. Trump has been pushing pullout.
While I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, did it really require taking nearly four years to accomplish this? Mr. Trump, you might have had a chance to be reelected if you had begun in earnest, upon first taking office, the process of bringing all troops home from all conflict zones. If you really believed in peace, as many of your supporters on this site have claimed, what would it have cost you to do this? That you would have been a one term president? And exactly how is that turning out?
Only the naïve or fool believe a politician. Trump was not a career politician but basically white trash for all his money.
“Only the naïve or fool believe a politician.”
And I never once believed Trump was any kind of peacenik. For his warmongering alone I would never vote for him, but, I had many other reasons as well for not supporting him. There do, however, seem to be some people on this site who are still convinced that he is different in some substantial way from any of the other liars who have held the office. The only way he is different is that he is cruder and less intelligent than his predecessors, he is every bit as much of a tyrant.
Agree with all you say.
The winner in 2016 would inherit a war weary US population. This why trump,running gop could even mention getting out of war.
Perhaps Raimondo saw an opportunity I hadn’t noticed until the dems produced multiple antiwar bills
over the last 4 years. If trump had crossed the aisle, and supported the antiwar dems, he could have broken both parties for the better, who knows where we would be now. Such a golden opportunity lost. What a huge waste of time, blood, treasure and lost opportunity. Fire im.
Trump has a take charge personality. Problem is he has a limited attention span.
Even the GOP knew he was contradicting himself when he was simultaneously talking about building up our “depleted” military, bragging about his undying loyalty to Israel and his promise of belligerence(on steroids)towards Iran. Talking of filling GITMO lead one to believe that he probably was going to continue the war on terror in some way otherwise how do you get more “terrorsts” to fill it up? Plus I’m sure using the phrase “bombing the shit” gave those at the pentagon a chubbie.
“If trump had crossed the aisle”
Because partisanship is the name of the game. Although the official oath of office is in support of fealty to the Constitution, the unofficial, but de facto, oath is fealty to the party. Trump, in this regard, is one of the worst.
Trump spent the last four years fighting made-up impeachment scandals from the Dems.
At least it wasn’t as gross as when the GOP went after fmr. President Clinton over Lewinsky.
Interesting no one ever asks Biden what he will do re Afghanistan.
Or, troops in Iraq, Yemen, Africa, Start talks, Korea…..such bs.
“Wednesday also marks 19 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban rulers who had harbored al Qaeda militants who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-afghanistan-military/u-s-troops-in-afghanistan-should-be-home-by-christmas-trump-idUKKBN26S3HZ
19 years later and the official fairy tale lives on.
They never mention those little details like “Taliban rulers who offered to capture Bin Laden and send him to Saudi Arabia” before being invaded. Bush and co. did Afgahnistan because it was “doable” per Wolfowitz. Or so they thought.
I always got a kick out of the networks showing supposed members of al Qaeda training in, I guess, Afghanistan. Every one of them would show some bearded men going across horizontal bars like those used in basic training here. As if that had anything to do with their actual training to fly planes into buildings. We should have bombed Florida.
Or that they simply wanted some PROOF. Meanwhile, even at the time of his alleged death, OBL’s FBI most wanted page STILL did not mention 9-11 or any involvement.
And 19 years later the REAL culprits continue to infest our government, or are retired at their homes in Texas and wherever the satan-hearted Cheney is living. Indeed, the fairy tale is still believed by far too many.
All the old warm cliché fuzzies trump and our age grew up with. Its so obvious to anyone in our age group. Turds from a dotard..
When pigs fly.
CRISPR DNA magic is not to be taken lightly.
All troops home except the contractors and CIA…!
Don’t worry, there will still be thousands of Xe mercenaries and others, plenty of CIA folks, plenty of NSA folks, all there to pick and process the opium poppies and rig the elections for the US puppet of the day.
One big reason CIA and mercenaries would remain in and never leave Afghanistan is China. US wants to encircle China like they did Soviet Union and now Russia, and Iran….to spy on them and create chaos and regime change…!