Is the Joke on Us, or on Our Glorious Leader?
Some days ago, the brat who poses as our nation’s president declared we would commence a winning strategy in Afghanistan. I believe he said “win” at least five times, eliciting a lighthearted “ha ha ha” among the more jaded listeners.
That this flies in the face of logic—given the seventeen-year history of our military adventure in Afghanistan—is no impediment to Mr. Trump, whose logical faculties (such as they are) are overwhelmed by his egotism, vainglory, and desperate cravings for winning at any cost.
Containment of the Taliban, not defeating them, is the name of the game in Afghanistan, which the generals whom Trump maintains he consulted at length know very well. (He also said he had looked at the Afghanistan situation “from every angle.” That was not the only time that I laughed out loud at this speech, but it was probably the loudest.) My guess is that the only way they could sell their strategy to him was to tell him it was a “winning” strategy, because the language of zero-sum games is the only language he understands. I’d wager they had a good laugh among themselves once the ruse succeeded.
As the generals see it, the cost of failing to contain the Taliban is unacceptable, so for Trump’s and his followers’ sake, they have to maintain a charade of “winning” just to hold ground.
Trump paid lip service to seeking cooperation from India and NATO, but no one who has been watching Trump for the last year expects a campaign of cooperation from someone who has throughout his career surrounded himself with yes-men, insulted and degraded dissenters, and disparaged rivals with personal insults. His public scolding of Pakistan in a major speech not only raised the hackles of the very country who is most vital to a (relatively) peaceful resolution in Afghanistan, but also gave cold comfort to allies or potential allies who could expect a public lashing from Trump someday if they questioned or disappointed him. A real morale-bruiser, Donald. (Pakistan may deserve a scolding, but backchanneling is the way to do it. I imagine the generals were cringing as Trump went that route.)
“Graveyard of Empires?” Pretty Much So. Check out the following link to get a fuller picture:
It Does Depend on What You Mean by “Win”
Winning, in terms of routing the Taliban from Afghanistan’s formal boundaries, is doomed, and I can’t imagine that Trump sees a “win” in any other terms. His tone and rhetoric imply he wants to crush the enemy, and appears not to realize that in asymmetrical warfare, crushing actions are only temporary. Lop off one head of a zealously determined and disciplined hydra-headed foe, and another head pops up somewhere else.
Such has been the experience of the generals in Afghanistan to date. It is true that they were hampered by political considerations on the part of George W. Bush and especially Barack Obama, whereas Trump said that he would give the military a freer hand. But they’re never going to get the 200,000-plus troops it would need to drive the Taliban completely underground and keep it there,* at the same time having to counter the ill-will that Trump will sow among our allies.
By now they see that the only realistic “win” has to be in terms of a settlement that the Afghans themselves want and are capable and willing to defend—that’s the people at large, not just the soldiers that are being trained. For that to happen, various tribes in the country have to agree to bury their own respective hatchets. That’s the tipping point that the generals are hoping for, but they can’t achieve it if the Taliban keeps breaking out of the containment.
And you can be sure that whatever the Afghans want—should they be able to get it—will be looked upon by Trump as a betrayal. It won’t be his triumphant “win,” it will be a compromise, to include some form of detente with the Taliban—and in Trump’s world compromise is failure. We can only hope that if and when the tipping point comes, Trump is out of office.
* There were 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2011, and you see where that got us.