Weird thing to call out as a strawman. I didn't think you'd consider it a mischaracterization of "like announcing an end date so the bad guys can sit tight and wait it out." I thought emboldening them because they know when the troops were leaving was your whole point. But if that's sticking in your craw, I can cheerfully withdraw the word "emboldening." It wasn't central to my point that whenever you announce the troops are leaving--effective in 6 months or effective in 0 minutes--the "bad guys" know when they're no longer opposed by those troops.
Are we leaving all our military bases in the middle east? I don't think we are. Ha ha. You think Trump isn't bombing Pakistan? You think the Obama administration didn't try to get Pakistan to do more? There's no change there, only words. barfo
You keep trying to defend your original, illogical comment ("the bad guys know they can just sit and wait it out") with an unrelated (and far more reasonable) argument that the sooner the troops are out of harm's way, the better.
I think Obama was a miserable failure and a war monger. Have a clue: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/21/iraq-rejects-us-plea-bases Iraq rejects US request to maintain bases after troop withdrawal
Setting a date in the future doesn't accomplish anything good. I've said that over and over, no matter how you want to twist it (because you're so wrong). I made no illogical comment. Reason still escapes you.
What you've also said over and over is that it accomplishes something bad (that the bad guys know when the troops are gone) that your preferred strategy would also accomplish. That's what is illogical.
But you'll like it when Trump does the same things. Military bases aren't nation building whether or not we abandon them later. And we certainly aren't abandoning every base we have in the middle east. barfo
Yes, our troops in harm's way is bad. Killing civilians is bad. Staying for any amount of time, exit date announced or not, accomplishes that. Announcing a date in the future accomplishes no good. The enemy can wait it out, instead of trying to make it painful for us to remain. I don't call that emboldening anyone, but it does save them from a bloody fight.
I've already said I don't like it that we're staying. You have no clue what "I'll like." You dig yourself deeper when you say things like handing military bases built by the finest military organization in the world over isn't nation building. Military and defense are such a massive part of a nation that about 2/3 of our constitution is about military and defense.
You mean the same ally that sold Making Nuclear Weapons for Dummies books to North Korea and Iran? The same ally that supports the Taliban? Hell of an ally to have.
I really don't know how to evaluate militaristic foreign affairs. It seems to me that we simply aren't privy to the vast majority of the info we would need to reach we'll-reasoned conclusions. Sure, everyone would like to see our troops home and the war over, but that doesn't speak to the merits of continuing or ending the fight. Regardless of my evaluation of Trump making countless fundamental mistakes domestically and internationally (non-military) I can't honestly assess this most recent declaration.
So, as I understood Trump's speech last night, he's saying that he had to reconsider his campaign promise to pull our troops out of Afghanistan primarily because doing so would open the country up to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations using it as a staging ground for future attacks on the US. He also says that we're not going to engage in nation-building. What I don't get is if the existing Afghani government is too wobbly that it can't be trusted to provide defense against future terrorist bases, and if we're not engaging in nation-building, what's going to be different in X number of years that will provide for security against terrorists using Afghanistan as a base? I get that we're going to unleash the military and we're going to be into WINNING, but does anyone really think that means eradicating the Taliban and other terrorists to such a degree that they won't rebuild as soon as we leave?
In the past if we thought the Taliban was hiding in a hospital or school we would blow them and it up. Which is the right thing to do. Then we would rebuild the hospital or school. Which again, is the right thing to do. No more nation building means we'll still blow up the hospital or school but we will no longer rebuild it. I can see that helping the Taliban more than our troops.
The answers are (a) we aren't ever leaving, or (b) when we leave all hell will break loose. Take your pick. I kind of think since Trump admires Nixon, he's going to try to do what Nixon did in Vietnam. Drop a lot of bombs, kill a lot of people, declare 'peace with honor' and leave. barfo
The reality is that no President wants to engage in "nation building," because that carries a responsibility that isn't appropriate to either side (not to mention the costs) but every President, dealing with existing conflict (or in Bush's case, conflict thrust upon him), is forced to engage in some amount simply out of expedience (and, sometimes, because it's the right thing to do as Sly alludes to above).
