Saturday, May 27, 2017

What Is President Trump's Strategy For Afghanistan?

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in Kabul, Afghanistan on April 24, 2017. DoD Photo

Ehsan M. Ahrari, Small Wars Journal: Trump’s Imaginary “Strategy” for Afghanistan

Everyone was waiting for President Donald Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan. But the announcement of that strategy came as a repeat of President Barack Obama’s original version of that strategy. It stated that Trump is likely to send as many as 5000 additional US troops to Afghanistan.

Like almost all policies in the realm of domestic and foreign policy, Trump liked nothing about his predecessor’s way of conducting the Afghan war. So, the expectation was that he would announce a different approach to that war. But Afghanistan has a forbidding way of surprising everyone.

After sending his Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, and his National Security Advisor, Lt. General H.R. McMaster, to Afghanistan on “fact finding missions,” Trump found out that the Afghan war is not a winnable one; and the United States has no choice but to stay put and find some sort of a negotiated solution. In the interim, increasing ground troops appears to be a make-believe version of a strategy. That was precisely what Obama was doing.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis sums it up ....

.... “We’re under no illusions about the challenges associated with this mission. 2017 is going to be another tough year” for the Afghan and coalition security forces.

In short .... there is no path to victory.

6 comments:

jimbrown said...

Why dont we reclassify Afghanistan as live fire training area?

Unknown said...

Lol

Jimmy said...

#BREAKING:
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/05/29/09/26/30-extra-aussie-troops-for-afghanistan/?ocid=9newsfb
Now this is what I call a #GameChanger....

Jay Farquharson said...

LMFAO,

Peak "surge" was 145,000 IASF forces, not including Afghan's,

Bumping the RAA deployment from 30 to 300,......

LMFAO

Andrew Jackson said...

Canadia,fake country.

Jimmy said...

Jay, this is a HUGE development which could change the direction of the war...(sarcasm)

By the way, it's only a deployment of 30 RAINF troops not the 270 figure that you're thinking of - LMAO