Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Trump's New Afghanistan Policy is Bush's Old One

Candidate Donald Trump argued that America First meant building schools in the US before building them in Afghanistan. He argued for an immediate withdrawal of US forces from that country. Last night, he announced that the US is sending more troops for an indefinite amount of time to pursue strategic goals that have yet to be determined. The war goes on despite the evidence that says it is achieving nothing.

Mr. Trump listed three reasons for his flip-flop. "First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made." In business, this is known as the sunk-cost fallacy, that having spent millions a business must continue to spend so the initial bad investment can be salvaged. Having wasted a few thousand lives, a nation will waste more lives so that the sacrifice of the first to die is not in vain. The problem is if the entire military project is in vain, as this one is, all the deaths are pointless.

He continued, "Second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable . . . . A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th." The war is 16 years old. America is now fighting Taliban soldiers who were not born when the first Yankees arrived. It's about 15 years too late for "hasty." As for terrorists filling the vacuum, that will happen. Yet, with good intelligence and a few hundred special forces, America can hunt them down. It has always been a manhunt, not a war.

"Third and finally," said the president, "I concluded that the security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense. Today, 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the highest concentration in any region anywhere in the world." They only pose a threat to America when they get to New York or LA. Good intel and special forces, again, manage this problem; it can't be solved.

There was some good news in that he stated Pakistan's policies create many of the problems in the region. "We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country's harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. servicemembers and officials. It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace." Here, here. Except, the president shouldn't have stated that openly on global TV. Nothing will put the Pakistani generals' backs up more than that.

Above all, though, there is no strategic objective in America's policy. The Bush administration went in with guns ablazing to wipe out Islamic terrorism once and for all, create a stable and democratic Afghan government and otherwise turn the place into a doppleganger of Oklahoma. When that proved impossible, no one in Washington came up with a plan to replace the original. Mr. Obama won the White House by opposing this "dumb war." Mr. Trump seems to be OK with fighting a dumb war.

Al Qaeda used Afghanistan to train its September 11 murderers; such a situation cannot be allowed to recur. How one prevents that, though, is at the foundation of American security policy. Fighting terrorists is like fighting the mafia, not like fighting an army. A blitzkrieg wiped out the Iraqi army, but it is more or less useless in dealing with the 12 killers who brought death to Barcelona last week. When Al Capone was at his peak, the solution was not putting the US Army on the streets of Chicago.

Mr. Trump has betrayed the people who voted for him because they wanted the money wasted in Afghanistan to be spent in the US. There will be no victory because there is no set of victory conditions. As a result, there will be no ticker-tape parades to let him cover up this betrayal. This is the first time he has gone against his base. It won't be the last. The question is how forgiving those people are.

© Copyright 2017 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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