Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller formally announced troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq on Tuesday. Miller said that by January 15th 2021, there will be 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and 2,500 troops in Iraq. There are currently about 4,500 US troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq.
Miller’s announcement confirmed a story published by CNN on Monday that said the Pentagon was preparing for the order. Other reports suggested President Trump was also planning to withdraw troops from Somalia, but that was not mentioned in Miller’s announcement.
The announcement comes after President Trump’s Pentagon shake-up that started with the firing of Mark Esper. The overhaul was rumored to be related to disagreements over troop withdrawals. In October, President Trump said all US troops in Afghanistan “should” be home by Christmas but the declaration never turned into an order.
The US-Taliban peace deal paved the way for all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan by Spring 2021, but US officials regularly stress the withdrawal is “conditions-based.” National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has previously said the plan was to bring numbers down to 2,500 in Afghanistan by early 2021.
The announcement squanders any hope of President Trump actually ending the war in Afghanistan before January 20th, when Joe Biden is expected to be inaugurated. Miller said the drawdowns do “not equate to a change in US policy or objectives.”
It’s not enough. A single troop left in country is a toehold Biden can and will f**k with.
That’s exactly why Trump is not pulling them all out; comrade; so Biden has his toehold.
All Trump’s doing is reading his scripts and playing his role. And Biden is stepping right into place right behind him; just like he did behind Obama, and he did behind…, and so forth.
Have You heard any rumors about Million MAGA March Two happening on January 20?
The Pentagon is delaying the pullouts, not Trump.
They’re timing out the Trump Presidency to keep the war going.
Nobody prevented Trump to order total troop withdrawal yesterday ,one year ago or 3 years ago.
He could have fired everybody that would have obstructed him. He could have done recess appointment. He could have signed executive order .
War destroys democracy. Congress has abdicated its responsibility and role regarding the declaration of war . Same Congress frets over terminating war . It’s a sick country .
Then these people complain of terrorism, disregard of rights of women and children and fundamentalism abroad and worry about breakdowns of social fabrics back home!.
That’s not how U.S. politics works. The elite has control of most of the checks and balances. The Pentagon itself might openly mutiny, and be lauded as heros by the MSM and elites.
Trump could give unambiguous pullout orders. And nobody would have stopped McConnel and the Senate RINOs from following through with the Democratic impeachment, removing President Trump and reversing his pullout orders.
Pence might have tried to follow through, but if not he would have been impeached as well, leaving us with Pelosi. Nothing would have protected withdrawing soldiers from being martyred, even en masse, to sabotage the pullout. Yet little by little, troop number went down.
The only reason Trump is still alive, is likely that he did try to deal and could be stalled until the election. Which the Globalist Democrats naturally cheated, just to be sure.
In the meantime, we had no new wars. Russia and China and the rest of the world, surely know what kind of monster the U.S. is now. Monsters we are too, BTW, myself included.
Likely they also can’t wait for Trump to be gone so they can take the kid gloves off and hot mits on and deal with it.
The Eurasians showed Trump mercy. A quality few here can appreciate, or the never-Trumpers would not have been so quick to spurn the one thing Eurasia could grant via Donald J. Trump.
‘We’ are not absolved from Euro-America’s global crimes by being antiwar wankers, and while they are safely over there, the Deep State is right here over us.
Excuses, excuses.
Why not just admit you want the troops to stay mired in quagmires?
Except I don’t. I want them gone, now, and I expect the only person who can give the order to have done so, preferably the day he took office.
He failed.
So the solution is to cheat Trump out of office and install Harris-Biden, who won’t even bother to talk about withdrawing from the Forever Wars?
Propaganda 101. The War Machine Globalists want withdrawal removed entirely from elite political discussion. Trumps constant attempts to pull out, prevent such a blackout.
Assumes further facts not in evidence.
“There is Undeniable Mathematical Evidence the Election is Being Stolen” – The Red Elepahants, Nov. 5, 2020.
https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/
That proves something, I guess.
If you have “undeniable mathematical evidence”, then tell the Trump legal team, stop arguing with folks on the internet.
Oh, the RINOs on the Trump legal team are too busy trying to throw the fight.
Looks like from the Sidney Powell ‘Kraken’ meltdown, the play is to divide the GOP between the never-surrender Trump Base and Surrender Republicans, just before the Georgia runoff elections for the Senate.
Perhaps present a false-choice, false-dichotomy to Trumpians; give up the Presidency fight and you can have the Senate, when realistically, Republicans should unite to fight for both.,
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/seth-meyers-brutally-mocks-sidney-powell-the-trump-lawyer-too-insane-for-tucker-carlson/ar-BB1biAoe
There are issues with voting machines, but Powell’s cracko-Kraken notions do not seem to be the winning way to address the problem.
There is no way to “fight for both.”
Vis a vis the presidency fight, it’s been over for weeks, unless a bunch of electors decide to abandon the candidates they’re pledged to.
Trump isn’t fighting for the presidency. He’s just working to cook up a mythology, for future use, in which he was robbed of the presidency rather than losing it in the most pedestrian way possible.
Well, massive electoral fraud is a banal ‘pedestrian’ tactic.
The very use of the word pedestrian as a pejorative is leftist snobbery towards the commoner they claim to uphold and defend.
Even 1 hostage to war is obviously too many. Every soldier that remains, is a potential martyr for the next surge.
It took three top-level firings to even accomplish 2500. Lets hope the ones brought out, can be brought out without incident and not martyred to cancel the withdrawals.
Not a martyr but an invader.
Both, sadly. And when the war machine is done with them and they survive that far, they will be cast aside as an enemy to the budget, cheaper a suicide victim.
While some U.S. soldiers are no doubt are all into war, many are victims of the poverty draft and see no other way to advance themselves into college, or even a paying job.
COVID-1984 could swell the recruitment offices with young men and women having no other employment option but the military.
Drawdown is a joke–get them all outta there!
https://thebaraza.org/war-and-peace/the-things-we-know-but-do-not-say-about-the-costs-of-american-war/
The unspoken costs of America’s wars.
Get them all out-they should never have gone there
Take them away also from Iraq and Syria-should not be there.
Stop the threats and sanctions to Iran, Syria, Venezuela and of course Russia and China. Put your own house in order.
Oh sorry-Trump’s few attempts to change US interference were not allowed. This last gasp is too late- Joe Biden will go back to the usual warmongering.