Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The War in Afghanistan Gets a New Owner

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Last night the bloodshed and unrelenting horror that is the war in Afghanistan became the personal property of hotelier Donald Trump.    In a major televised address, Trump announced an about-face from his earlier position when, as a candidate, he had advocated for the United States withdrawing from the war.  Now the United States is apparently in it to win it.

Donald John might do well to turn off Fox News and watch the History Channel instead - because it is doubtful he would ever commit to reading anything as mundane as history.   The Afghan peoples have been fighting off the Brits, the Soviets, and now the Americans for nearly two centuries and all of the invaders have learned the hard way that the people and the terrain are almost impossible to subdue.  The British were involved militarily in Afghanistan three times between 1839 and 1919 and achieved a mixed record at best.  The Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) was such a disaster that it is credited as being a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And now the United States has been fighting there for sixteen years - and has been unable to conquer what is essentially still a third-world nation.

But Trump is going to fix that.  He is the man with the plan, although he was careful not to say what that plan was other than he was going to leave the war to "his" generals.  There are currently 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and that number will rise.  Trump won't say how many additional troops will be heading there, but "his" generals are hinting that the initial increase will be around fifty-percent - or four thousand more men and women in U.S. uniforms.  Trump will also tell us when we have won, though the criteria he will use in making that determination will be kept secret.

Trump's war in Afghanistan will have to be won militarily because, after six long months in office, Donald John still has not nominated an ambassador to Afghanistan.  Diplomacy, one must assume, is for losers.   "His" generals are probably still back-slapping each other this morning now that they are going to have free-rein to pursue this war.   But one has to wonder how the generals will be feeling six months or a year from now when no visible progress has been made, and a tantrum-prone Trump begins pointing his fat little fingers and assigning blame.

Military careers are going to end in scorn and ridicule.

Nothing is ever Trump's fault.

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