Politics TRUMP VOWS CONTINUED FIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN; REVERSING STANCE

The reality is that you don't know the reality of it.

W's Mission Accomplished was the start of Nation Building. When the decision was made to take out Saddam, Colin Powell said, "you break it, you own it."

 

Vietnam is now an ally.

How'd that work out?

 

Fine, although it probably would have been a lot more fine if we'd never gone in the first place.

I'm not arguing myself for (or against) staying in Afghanistan. I was just trying to predict what Trump might do.

barfo

 

Eradicating the Taliban isn't the only solution. 17 years and our military (and NATO, too) haven't accomplished that. We don't even control 1/2 of Afghanistan.

This kind of thing won the peace in Iraq until we allowed the Iraq government to break the treaties and alliances (and worse).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/22/white-house-opens-door-peace-talks-taliban/

White House opens door to peace talks with the Taliban

The Trump White House is entertaining the possibility of officially backing Afghan-led peace talks with the Taliban, as a way to bring the longest war in American history to a close.

Mr. Trump alluded to Washington’s overt support for negotiations with the Taliban, and their potential political role in a postwar Afghanistan, as part of the administration’s new Afghan strategy unveiled during a prime-time address to the nation Monday night.

“Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Mr. Trump told the crowd of U.S. service members gathered at Fort Meyer in Arlington, Virginia.

“But nobody knows if or when that will ever happen,” the commander in chief added.

 

Your kind got us into that mess.

If I were to predict what Trump is doing, I'd guess he does have some sort of benchmark about if we're succeeding in Afghanistan, and that the generals he's empowered know they have to show some sort of new successes.

 

If the enemy is waiting rather than fighting, we aren't in harm's way. And we don't have to bomb weddings, that's strictly optional.

barfo

 

If they can take pot shots at us, they will. If they can plant IEDs, they will.

They're just not going to try for some large scale assault.

 

Yes, I heard about the benchmark. Apparently McMaster showed him a photo of Afghan girls in miniskirts back in the early 70s.


Well, not what I think of as miniskirts, but close enough for Trump I guess.

barfo

 

You'd rather we go to war against Pakistan?

All that's going to do is destabilize a nuclear power where we know a lot of terrorists live.

 

Don't quit your day job.

 

I think you would have called that 'surrender' if Obama had said it.

barfo

 

So Trump has super secret benchmarks that he'll use to declare victory after we maybe hit them.

 

A treaty isn't surrender.

 

Agree with you about what?

That presidents do want to do nation building?

Like Obama did in Libya? Bush in Iraq?

Wow, you and the neocons are like minded.

 

If they didn't want to, they wouldn't do it. What they do is everything, not what they say.

Just as Trump said he'd get us out of Afghanistan, his actions are we're staying.

The neocons absolutely wanted to nation build. Their policy idea was that a democratic Iraq would spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

I'll play your game.

You want us to go to war everywhere we can.

See how that works?

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/apr/7/bush-a-convert-to-nation-building/

Almost eight years later, U.S. interagency “provincial reconstruction teams” are trying to rebuild the economy and government in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. Army’s just-revised field manual puts military post-conflict “stability operations” on a par with fighting wars. And the State Department’s new Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization is recruiting an elite Civilian Reserve Corps of specialists — engineers, judges, prison wardens, health experts and city planners — to deploy to failed states in a crisis in as little as 48 hours.

And none of the leading candidates to succeed Mr. Bush seems likely to reverse course.

“They don’t typically use the term, but the Bush administration has clearly embraced the idea of nation building with the fervor of a convert,” said James Dobbins, special envoy in the Clinton administration to a string of failed states, from Somalia to Haiti, and Mr. Bush’s first special envoy to Afghanistan after the 2001-02 military campaign.

“After Iraq, the main Democratic criticism has been not that we shouldn’t do nation building, but that we should do it better the next time we try,” he said.

 

I accept your treaty signature, then.

barfo