In the years leading up to his election, President Trump repeatedly panned the Afghan War, calling for an end to the conflict, and complaining that the US had been wasting billions of dollars in the conflict since 2001 that could be better spent domestically.
Though President Trump has never formally disavowed those stated positions, his actual policy within Afghanistan has been starkly different, mostly a continuation of the escalations and nation-building that he’d long criticized from others.
During his August escalation speech, Trump conceded that his first instinct was to pull out of Afghanistan, but that policy changes once you’re in the Oval Office, which is the closest we’ve gotten to a revision in his aims, but even this came without much of an explanation of why the Afghan War went from being an embarrassing mistake to something he’s eager to keep doubling down on.
Military commanders have certainly played a part in this change, as they’ve given the impression that massive territory losses amounted to a “stalemate” which could be readily reversed. Commanders have even tried to spin the situation as already improving since the escalation was announced.
Yet the reality is that the US military has been bullish on the Afghan War for a solid 16 years now, predicting an imminent turnaround pretty much at every time in the entire occupation, despite any decisive changes on the ground ever happening.
The problem is NOT “the reality that the US military has been bullish on the Afghan War for a solid 16 years now, predicting an imminent turnaround pretty much at every time in the entire occupation, despite any decisive changes on the ground ever happening.”
The problem is that the American People have done nothing to force their Politicians to reign in that military [and its civilian component], and bring this Goat-Rope to an end. Of course, that wouldn’t happen, even if the American people wanted it happen; after all, that MIC owns, operates, buys, and sells those same Politicians.
Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” comes to mind.
…or…
…
Counting bodies like sheep
To the rhythm of the war drums
Pay no mind to the rabble…
A Perfect Circle: Pet
Every new military commander sees the light on arrival and remains focused on it, until he gets an ‘honorarium’ and jets home.
If Afghanistan finally drives the Imperialist States of Amerikastan into bankruptcy, collapse and disintegration, the 16 – or 20, or 25, or whatever – years of war will have been more than worth it.
16 years and Pence still had to sneak into the country unannounced. Maybe we could send him and Trump back over for a visit but this time we’ll announce it well in advance. If they make it back alive we’ll then believe the situation is improving.
If the Talies know he’s coming, they would rocket Bagram as a salute.
The essential difference between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is that, while Obama was at least, on the surface, leery of killing civilians, Trump is able to kill ‘jihadis’ by the bucketful while almost magically avoiding the deaths of civilians. Who would have thought the Trumpian warhammer was such a surgical instrument?