In case you missed the president*’s speech on Afghanistan, he:
1. Read (poorly) canned lines to pretend he has apologized for saying some of the Nazi torch-marchers were “very fine people”, and to try to slide away from his bigotry without apologizing;
2. Obsequiously talked about how brave our service members are, drawing attention to his five deferments and his disrespect for trans service members, simultaneously insulting the intelligence of the service members sitting right in front of him; and
3. Tried to sound tough, but changed exactly zero policies in Afghanistan.
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This was the sadly most normal speech President Trump has given as President. Normal because President Bush and President Obama gave the exact same speech on the exact same issue at the start of their presidencies. The only real difference is that the troops listening to it tonight were toddlers when the towers fell. 17 years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives later and we still aren’t closer to a stable Afghanistan. A courageous President would admit we never will be and bring them all home.
This is not an easy one for me, having worked with political party leaders in that region. But I also am not willing to say that our service members should be fighting the fight for the Afghans essentially indefinitely. I cannot say that.
I still hope there is a way to skillfully stabilize the country (particularly through regional diplomacy), for the sake of all those Afghans who oppose theocratic rule, particularly Afghan women and girls.
Trying to fix Afghanistan by making it more like Vietnam.
I don’t know … the “hold Pakistan accountable” bit sounds new to me. I think it means something, though I agree that it doesn’t mean as much as they would like us to think.
It means he just insulted Pakistan with no actual policy change (other abandoning democracy activists in the region). Doesn’t sound great. Sounds tragic, foolish, and not in keeping with American values.
I think we have a nuclear-armed Pakistan still engaged in a staring-contest with a nuclear-armed India across a border that has been contested for a very long time.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, we have a struggling and corrupt democratic government controlling Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal for now. Pakistan has a very strong pro-Muslim, anti-American, and pro-Taliban opposition (and a large area where pro-Taliban forces can freely operate).
If there were easy one-speech answers to this issue, the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) would have ended a decade ago. Or, for that matter, would have been resolved by the Russians during their lengthy Afghanistan war.
It is worth remembering that OBL was trained by the US as a “freedom fighter” against the evil Soviets (sort of like Ho Chi Minh in an earlier conflict).
The threat to “hold Pakistan accountable” sounds to me exactly like the kind of irrational bluster that starts (losing) wars.
I think we, and especially Mr. Trump and those who seek to “hold Pakistan accountable”, must remember that Pakistan fears India far more than ISIS or the Taliban.
We would do well to try and see issues like this through the eyes of Pakistan and Afghanistan — an exercise that seems to be nearly impossible for Mr. Trump and for too much of our much-vaunted foreign policy establishment.
I do recall that India got annoyed when we cozied up to Pakistan at the start of all this mess. Digby wrote today about the Bannon/Kushner privatization plan, which has fallen out of favor (but Trump was intrigued), so it looks like he moved to the more traditional approach.
You know, because that’s been working so well. It is a mess over there, I welcome almost any change for whatever good it might bring.
I’m a cold hearted realist. Not only are we failing to make any progress in a historically ungovernable country, we are also actually serving as a force of stability for rent seeking neighbors that are actually our foes! It’s one thing to guarantee security for security poor allies in Eastern Europe and East Asia, its quite another to provide our rivals Iran, Russia, Pakistan and China with a free buffer force from the Taliban.
Stopping the Taliban coming back is one of those political falsehoods bipartisan foreign policy specialists continue to believe in, like denuclearizing North Korea.
I we leave tomorrow we actually improve security in the region. We can negotiate a power sharing agreement with the Taliban with strong assurances they denounce terrorism and will face repercussions if they sponsor it again. They can try governing the country again, and this time they are a more diverse and less religiously fundamentalist force.
We give fast tracked visas to any fully vetted Afghan ally that wants to come to the US. Once America leaves the Pakistani government lose its greatest scapegoat, the Chinese are forced to defend their Muslim majority western frontier and maybe stop harassing Bhutan and Vietnam, and the Russians will need to work to contain the Taliban which will divert their resources from backing Assad and their puppet regime in East Ukraine. The Iranians-who actually proposed invading with us after 9/11 an nearly invaded in 1998 will now be forced to defend their eastern frontier taking resources away from their meddling in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
Afghanistan has not been our problem since Al Qaeda was eliminated. They will never become a viavle nation state, let alone, educate their girls or become a Jeffersonian democracy. The utopian impulses of our foreign policy have to end and we need to recognize the limits ignoring our power. Afghanistan absolutely should be its neighbors-all rivals of ours-problem. We should stop doing the work for them and make them pay the bill.
I agree with this generally, but isn’t this also why we’re there? We want to have a presence in the region.
The region only concerns us if it produces terrorists that can kill Americans. We can keep a CBG in the Indian Ocean and deploy special forces and drones to kill AQ if and when it reforms. I would also cut off Pakistan entirely from military aid and start putting all our chips on India, an actual democracy, who can be a vital partner to help us contain China. With the veneer of our friendship gone, we can strike AQ and ISIL targets in Pakistan with impunity instead of asking for permission and giving their friends in ISI warning time. Every raid should mimic the Osama raid in precision and lack of coordination with Pakistan.
Allowing a Taliban governed Afghanistan would also serve as a check on a rising Iran and Russian and Chinese assertion and cooperation in Central Asia. We should be shifting trade and paying for airbases in Central Asia as part of our containment of Russia and China.
We could even use the restored Taliban as a pretext to win Iran over to our fold under the right conditions. I’d realign around Iran, Iraq and a Kurdish state to counter Turkey and Saudi Arabia whom we should cut off. Maybe use their idiocy against Qatar to win them back.
Overall I’m a rogue state dove and great power hawk. We can contain North Korea with a strong nuclear deterrence and localized missile defense deployments in SK and Japan. They’ll also double as preventing China from gaining second strike parity with the US, protecting Taiwan and our other Southeast Asian allies from a muscular China.
Keep trading with them and making them look like equal partners-the just want international legitimacy and if we can again break them from Russia that would be a coup.
As far as I know-no presidential candidate took these set of principles in 2016. But it’s what the US should do. Too many of our allies are legacy rent seekers who forget who the client state is in their relationship with the US. Saudis and Pakistan are high on that list, along with the Afghan government.
Putin plays the long game better than the West and recognizes, with one glaring exception, that Russia has no friends: only interests. He is beginning to pay dearly for the rent seeking Assad though, and a restored Taliban would do a lot of good for restoring a balance of power to Central Asia. Think of all the Syrians we could save if we forced Russia and Iran to pay for their anti-Taliban defenses?
This idiot also said he will not telegraph his actions……apparently forgetting the reality that there are numerous other nations involved and they will need to know about any attacks in order to protect their troops.
It’s a sad and dangerous world when a produce clerk at a food market (me) knows more than our “Commander in Chief”.
This idiot is also, apparently, totally unaware that for centuries, foreign powers have tried to calm/control this region without success, with the most recent prior to us being the former Soviet Union – where the USA backed the rebels!-.
It’s a sad and dangerous world when a produce clerk at a food market (me), knows more about the history of the region than our president.
Then again, I had to WORK for what I have and what I know. Unlike our idiot in the White House, I was not “born rich” and spent my life being coddled by my wealthy brethren.
Actually this is a rare example where Trump is listening to the experts-it just so happens that all of them are wrong on Afghanistan. 2013 Trump had the right idea to cut our losses and GTFO.
At last, Trump and Elizabeth Warren agree on something, ie.empty platitudes and no change in Afghanistan.