The US has been in Afghanistan since 2001, and in spite of every president claiming to end or shorten the war in Afghanistan, the US has continued to maintain her “presence” there while fighting the “war” taking place in that nation.
After three years of the US military languishing in Afghanistan, Trump has declared that he could win the war “in one week”:
resident Donald Trump on Monday touted a secret plan to win the war in Afghanistan “in a week” at a tremendous cost to life, but insisted he would rather work with regional partners to “extricate” U.S. troops and bring to a close the nearly two-decade-long military conflict.
“If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump said.
“I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth,” the president continued. “It would be gone. It would be over in — literally in ten days. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go that route.”
Trump, speaking alongside Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office, said there exists “tremendous potential between” the U.S. and Pakistan, and predicted that the Islamic Republic would “help us out to extricate ourselves” from Afghanistan.
“Basically, we’re policemen right now, and we’re not supposed to be policemen. We’ve been there for 19 years in Afghanistan. It’s ridiculous, and I think Pakistan helps us with that because we don’t want to stay as policemen,” the president said.
“If we wanted to, we could win that war. I have a plan that would win that war in a very short period of time, you understand that better than anybody,” Trump added, turning to Khan. But instead of “fighting to win,” U.S. forces in Afghanistan are too focused on “building gas stations” and “rebuilding schools,” Trump alleged.
“The United States, we shouldn’t be doing that. That’s for them to do,” he said. “But what we did and what our leadership got us into is ridiculous.”
The declaration from Trump comes amid a sustained lack of permanent leadership atop the Pentagon since former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis departed the administration in January — an exit provoked in part by the president’s stated intention to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria, as well as contemporaneous reports of a similar withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Trump for several months has been vocal in his desire to reduce America’s military presence in the Middle East, although Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — his nominee to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned a hurried drawdown of troops in Afghanistan would be a “strategic mistake” at a Senate confirmation hearing just two weeks ago.
“We have already withdrawn quite a few, and we’re doing it very slowly, very safely, and we’re working with Pakistan,” the president said Monday.
Khan also made a diplomatic ask of Trump from the White House, requesting that his American counterpart step in to broker talks between Pakistan and India aimed at ending the more than 70-year Kashmir territorial conflict.
“I feel that only the most powerful state, headed by President Trump, can bring the two countries together,” Khan said, adding that the U.S. “can play the most important role in bringing peace in the subcontinent.”
Trump told Khan that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also extended the invitation to arbitrate the negotiations two weeks ago, and that he would “love to be a mediator” for the South Asian nations.
“President, I can tell you that right now, you will have the prayers of over a billion people if you can mediate and resolve the situation,” Khan replied.
But Raveesh Kumar, the spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, tweeted Monday afternoon that Modi never called on Trump to intervene in the Kashmir dialogue, writing online: “It has been India’s consistent position … that all outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally.” (source, source)
So does this mean that Trump chose to allow the US military to stay in Afghanistan under miserable conditions, and thus he chose to lose?
Likewise, the supposed claim of not wanting to kill “10 million people” is also laughable. After all, the US certainly did not have a problem funding Islamic terrorist groups to commit genocide against the Christians of Iraq, wiping out 2000 years of history is less than two decades. Given the US-government subsidized abortion industry whose roots are not in Planned Parenthood, but in the military-industrial complex and Silicon Valley driven by the desire for producing the next generation pf war weapons as well as a desire to turn man into a “god” through genetic engineering and technological bio-integration, the fact that the US directly facilitated the Bolshevik takeover of Russia and created the conditions for the Second World War, not to mention the entire history of eugenics which is inseparable from the first English settlements to the US, it is laughable to say that the US would have any moral repugnance towards mass murder. Political repugnance certainly, but if it is viewed as “justifiable” and can be covered up in a socially acceptable way, then there is no issue.
But in all seriousness, Trump is not going to leave Afghanistan and neither will, likely in 2024, his successor leave either barring a major geopolitical event because Afghanistan sits in a critical geopolitical crossroads that is also a treasure of rare-earth minerals, which the US needs to fuel her military.
Trump promised that he would “drain the swamp,” but his actions indicate that he is not just a part, but willingly submerging himself in the swamp that he said he would drain. Insults or strongly-worded statements do not change, and should not be interpreted as indications of change from previous policy barring a significant variance in one’s actions, which one does not see happening.