The Big Mistake: Trump Doubles Down in Afghanistan

As Roger L. Simon reported earlier, President Trump has announced he will send more troops to Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban. Although he didn’t mention a specific number, other media outlets report that number to be around 4,000 soldiers. Those soldiers are supposed to deliver the final blow to the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that has been resurgent the last few years.

Roger agrees with Trump’s decision, considering it absolutely “necessary” to defeat the Taliban while refraining from “nation-building.” Although that may sound wonderful and all, the fact of the matter is that 4,000 troops aren’t even almost sufficient to truly annihilate the Taliban (in short order). In other words, these troops won’t be sent to deliver the Taliban a death blow, but to… nation-build.

Trump, then, is doing exactly what George W. Bush and Barack Obama did before him.

That’s bad enough, but what makes this even worse is that Trump knows better. See this tweet of his from 2011:

When will we stop wasting our money on rebuilding Afghanistan? We must rebuild our country first.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2011

The president knows that the nation-building experiment is doomed to fail, yet he plans to repeat it nonetheless. The only possible reason? The establishment types who now surround him have drawn him into the swamp. He has bought into the same”logic” that is already costing the American taxpayer 45 billion dollar per year, without them getting anything back for it.

It’s nice and all to call yourself a “hawk,” but a real foreign policy hawk believes in completely destroying threats, after which you move on. Being a “hawk” doesn’t mean sending in a meager 4,000 extra troops, giving a country a blank check to rebuild itself, and then bragging that you’re doing something useful when the entire world can see you aren’t.

Trump had the choice. He could have declared war on the Taliban and sent in tens of thousands of extra troops and used every weapon available to him to destroy them, he could have done nothing, or he could have doubled-down on the failed nation-building policies of the past. He has clearly chosen the last option, which is the worst possible choice he could’ve made.