Pres. Trump on Afghanistan strategy: "We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities." pic.twitter.com/eJzGDl8Oc3
— ABC News (@ABC) August 22, 2017
So, here is a seriously-tendered presidential speech regarding the now 16 year old war in Afghanistan: We have no timeframe, we'll add more troops but who knows how many, we'll kill terrorists (like no one ever thought of that before) and we'll concentrate on engaging other countries while offering them very little in return. Which seems to be saying we will continue to plod along with no set metric of success, with a government in Afghanistan that we are not so much supporting as enduring, and all of these things, although being for the most part the same, will go differently, because...resolve-face.
Great. That was almost convincingly read off of a Teleprompter. I am more than ready to hear what Trump has to say in Phoenix, when he is giving his own message, and not a message made for him to sound sort of normal. But if anyone thinks this deserved a spotlight--not so much. What he has described is an indefinite stay, because the conditions in Afghanistan are not actually likely to change. He states that an exit would leave things worse--
It's a finger trap. We'll stay because otherwise pulling out will just suck us back in, and we'll accept that supposition for however long it takes. But the thing that might make Afghanistan better capable of policing their own extremists and battling terror? Might actually look like nation-building, and giving them the tools to be the country they need to be to not be a terrorist haven.
I dunno. I'm just very skeptical that this speech meant anything we should pay attention to.
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