As I’ve been counseling for some time, don’t expect any sitting president to withdraw from an Afghanistan from which a terrorist attack might be launched against the United States in the future. As we heard last night and as Alexis Simendinger & James Arkin note at RealClearPolitics, that’s the decision that President Trump has made:
President Trump’s first prime-time address Monday night leaned on themes of national unity, love of country, and America’s fears since 2001 of terrorist attacks.
Aware that his decision to deploy more U.S. troops to Afghanistan would be controversial, the president wove together a narrative that implicitly acknowledged America’s own deep divisions and racial unrest, while describing a strategy for war-torn Afghanistan that he vowed would produce “an honorable and enduring outcome.â€
If we can’t win and we can’t withdraw without a complete victory, what will we do? We’ll remain in Afghanistan for the indefinite future with the Sisyphean task of propping up the corrupt, incompetent Afghan government. No foreseeable Afghan government will ever be much better than the present one. No foreseeable Afghan government will be able to afford the military the United States seems to think they need to defend their borders.
Meanwhile our continued military presence in Afghanistan means we will also continue to prop up the corrupt, incompetent Pakistani government without whose cooperation supporting our troops in Afghanistan would be impossible. As the robber barons of our Afghan supply lines, the Pakistani government is in the enviable position of being able to promote or retard our efforts in Afghanistan at their discretion.
