Afghanistan? Say what? What happened to ISIS, Syria, and North Korea? And what about Yemen?
Where’d Afghanistan suddenly pop up from?
With all the other conflict-torn hot zones on the planet currently threatening our existence, wasn’t Afghanistan just sort of in a holding pattern of violence and misery? After 16 years, close to a trillion dollars spent and a million American and Afghan soldiers and civilians dead or wounded, didn’t we Americans think that Afghanistan – if any of us ever even thought about it at all anymore - had long ago been filed under “Been There, Can’t Do That?”
How did the same old tribal and guerilla warfare that's been ravaging that shattered country since we bombed it halfway back to the stone age after the 911 attack - which was planned and carried out by the way, by Saudi Arabians, not Afghans - suddenly become such a great threat to the citizens of United States?
I mean, wasn't it just last month that we were on the verge of a nuclear war with North Korea?
So why has Donald Trump decided out of the blue to escalate the war in Afghanistan instead? (A war he promised during his campaign to immediately extricate us from? )
Well, I'll tell you why.
Where’d Afghanistan suddenly pop up from?
With all the other conflict-torn hot zones on the planet currently threatening our existence, wasn’t Afghanistan just sort of in a holding pattern of violence and misery? After 16 years, close to a trillion dollars spent and a million American and Afghan soldiers and civilians dead or wounded, didn’t we Americans think that Afghanistan – if any of us ever even thought about it at all anymore - had long ago been filed under “Been There, Can’t Do That?”
How did the same old tribal and guerilla warfare that's been ravaging that shattered country since we bombed it halfway back to the stone age after the 911 attack - which was planned and carried out by the way, by Saudi Arabians, not Afghans - suddenly become such a great threat to the citizens of United States?
I mean, wasn't it just last month that we were on the verge of a nuclear war with North Korea?
So why has Donald Trump decided out of the blue to escalate the war in Afghanistan instead? (A war he promised during his campaign to immediately extricate us from? )
Well, I'll tell you why.
| Steve Bannon's departure, |  |
...left a void that Trump's generals apparently have rushed in to fill.
Instead of Steve Bannon it's now Donald Trump's generals who are telling him what to think and what to do.
And so Donald Trump has given free reign and unchecked power to his military commanders to send an infinite number of troops to Afghanistan for an unlimited time - maybe forever - to fight for...what?
Until we win? Win what? A victory? And what might a victory in Afghanistan look like? How will we know when we've won? And if the United States couldn't win - whatever that means - when we had 100,000 American soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan, how many more young men and women will we have to send over there to fight and die for...what?
And if the trillion dollars our country has already squandered on Afghanistan hasn't been enough to buy a victory in Afghanistan, how many more trillions will have to be spent, how much more debt will our country have to be plunged into, how many more American and Afghan lives will have to be sacrificed before Donald Trump and his generals will admit what they already know. That there's no such thing as an American victory in Afghanistan.
Our Congress won't allocate the funds for universal health care or for repairing our crumbling infrastructure or for updating our airports and building a high-speed railway system.
But there's always enough money and expendable lives for war.
Instead of Steve Bannon it's now Donald Trump's generals who are telling him what to think and what to do.
And so Donald Trump has given free reign and unchecked power to his military commanders to send an infinite number of troops to Afghanistan for an unlimited time - maybe forever - to fight for...what?
Until we win? Win what? A victory? And what might a victory in Afghanistan look like? How will we know when we've won? And if the United States couldn't win - whatever that means - when we had 100,000 American soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan, how many more young men and women will we have to send over there to fight and die for...what?
And if the trillion dollars our country has already squandered on Afghanistan hasn't been enough to buy a victory in Afghanistan, how many more trillions will have to be spent, how much more debt will our country have to be plunged into, how many more American and Afghan lives will have to be sacrificed before Donald Trump and his generals will admit what they already know. That there's no such thing as an American victory in Afghanistan.
Our Congress won't allocate the funds for universal health care or for repairing our crumbling infrastructure or for updating our airports and building a high-speed railway system.
But there's always enough money and expendable lives for war.
Reference:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/08/22/daily-202-a-dozen-key-lines-from-trump-s-afghanistan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/08/22/daily-202-a-dozen-key-lines-from-trump-s-afghanistan
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