By all means read the entirety of Susan Glasser’s post at Politico on Trump’s speech last night but at the very least consider this passage:
Not long ago I interviewed Laurel Miller, who served as America’s top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan until the end of June, when she left the State Department and the Trump administration shut down her office. Here is what she had to say on the subject of winning, a sentiment echoed by numerous other current and former U.S. officials with whom I’ve spoken about this in recent weeks:
“I don’t think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes that the war is winnable. It’s possible to prevent the defeat of the Afghan government and prevent military victory by the Taliban, but this is not a war that’s going to be won, certainly not in any time horizon that’s relevant to political decision-making in Washington.â€
Also see her remarks about the debate about Pakistan within the administration.
I maintain my view that the American people need to resign themselves to the political reality that we’ll have troops in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future but that we need to alter the mission our troops are being asked to perform from counter-insurgency, impossible practically by definition, to one of counter-terrorism, reducing the operational tempo and, consequently, U. S. casualties commensurately.
Really, we need to leave. At this point the only reason we are keeping troops there is so that POTUS won’t look bad when things fall apart after we leave, which happens whether we leave no or 20 years from now. $10 billion-$20 billion a year to make POTUS re-eelctable. Steep price. Add in lives lost and it is worse.
Steve
Welcome to American political reality. It’s only tangentially related to actual reality.
The only way I can see of getting out is if the president’s party supports withdrawal and the party other than the president’s party starts taking a more conciliatory approach. When Democrats support Obama (and ignore rising numbers of casualties) for staying in and attack Bush for not winning while Republicans support Trump for staying in and attack Obama for not winning, it’s just business as usual.
To make withdrawal risk tolerable (in case the Taliban take over and turn Afghanistan into a terrorist training camp) would require serious border / homeland security. As the last 2 years have demonstrated, too many people are opposed to this idea so withdrawal is pretty risky (essentially betting on the intentions of the Taliban).
On the other hand, I am really doubtful we can change the “tide” or even get to a stalemate without an order of magnitude more troops. I read the WSJ’s reporter on Kabul https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reporters-anguished-farewell-to-afghanistan-1503070725 , and its pretty clear the Taliban have the initiative.
Even a strict counter-terrorism mission maybe impossible — it depends on whether the Taliban’s goal is to drive NATO out?
I wonder if we should start figuring out how to revive a “northern alliance” in case the Kabul government collapses.
My assessment is that the Taliban wants to be the government of Pashtunistan.
And Trump becomes part of what Pat Lang calls the Borg.
Every president seems to make the same decision: stay. Perhaps it’s because they get different briefings than the pundits. One could only surmise it has to do with fighting terrorism there and not here.
I’m not impressed that Trump especially cares about the conventional political wisdom. Maybe he just agreed to a trial run after taking the handcuffs off the military to see how that goes, in contrast to predecessors.
Maybe President Trump has some super secret plan, but it is beginning to look a lot like Vietnam.
A condition based strategy sounds nice, but other than complete extermination of the Taliban, Taliban supporters, and Taliban sympathisers, what condition is going to stop them from re-emerging.
Keeping a small counter terrorist unit in Afghanistan seems like a good idea, but that requires an Afghan government willing to allow it. That requires keeping the Afghan government in power, and unless the competent Afghan men are hiding somewhere, the US will need to prop up the military and police force.
At some point a US president will pull out, and the government will collapse. If Nixon had not withdrawn the troops from Vietnam, the US would still be there.
and people who might become Taliban, Taliban supporters, or Taliban sympathisers, i.e. Pashtuns. Sixteen years have passed. I suspect that relatively few of the people we were fighting in 2001 are still fighting now. I think we’re fighting the children of the people we were fighting in 2001.
I agree and am befuddled.
I understand President Trump does not want to be the one ‘left holding the bag’, but this is fundamentally stupid.
President Trump is really good at pissing-off the elites, but if he will not pull-out, no politician ever will.
No matter how much he capitulates, the Trump-haters and #NeverTrump crowd are never going to like him.