President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

And what was the policy during the Bush years? Were we also not trying to "actually fight the enemy" during the 7 and a half years that the Afghanistan War was being lost under Dubya's watch?

And the sad truth remains that any gains that come from this will promptly be wiped out once we leave unless we're fully committed to a nation-building effort with regard to the Afghanistan government/military, which Trump expressly stated last night he's NOT committed to doing.

My fear is this is really just about manufacturing the phony appearance of a victory for Trump. We'll send the additional troops over for awhile, do some serious attacking, then declare that we stamped out the enemy and have won.

And then the same sort of awful cycle will happen as occurred with ISIS' formation after we left Iraq--except worse because the power vacuum will be larger and even more gapingly wide void. Al Qaeda will quickly reclaim Afghanistan as the world's leading safe haven for radical Islamic terrorists, except now extra emboldened because they'll damn well know we're never going to invade again after this 16 year effort ended in failure. And the whole place will end up posing an even scarier risk to the world than ever before.

But, hey, at least this way might enable Trump to temporarily declare he won a war that we actually lost--at the expense of just some more young American lives.

 

There aren't many people alive who have more experience in this area than Mattis does.

 

Few people have more experience as an NFL head coach than Jeff Fisher. Experience is valuable, but it doesn't always make one right. To me, that paraphrase of Mattis' thoughts sounded like a guy thinking of policy explanations that'd please his temperamental boss rather than saying "IMO based on my experience, this is the least worst choice.

 

It helps if you completely disregard everything the president says. He has no idea what he wants, nor does he know how to articulate what Mattis wants.

Mattis knows what he's doing, and he will not kowtow to someone who doesn't.

If Mattis is Jeff Fisher, Trump is Rich Kotite. Which one are you going to trust?

 

Mattis got Trump to change his mind.

How is that evidence of presenting him with policy explanations that would please Trump?

 

Nah, Trump changed his mind from months and months of studying Afghanistan from all angles.

 

Hollywood vs. Wash Post/Bezos vs. Bannon vs. Trump

Amazon faces high-profile pressure to pull ads from Bannon's far-right Breitbart

 

How bad can the Taliban be when Russia aids the Taliban and Russia is the template for Trump and the Republican Party. Russia aids Syria's Assad, too.

Trump will switch sides to the Taliban when he realizes they are winning. He cant get enough winning

 

I watched the CBS coverage from Carbondale, Ill, and they had a scientist/astronomer with Anthony Mason who continually looked up at the eclipse with the damn glasses in his hand -- multiple times (I assume you people would think a scientist hired by CBS to comment on eclipse coverage is smarter than Trump). I think it was instinctive for a lot of people to take a quick peek up at the sun. On a day when Trump continued our debacle in Afghanistan and USA Today reported that he had cleaned out the Secret Service travel budget, you people have a lot more important things to bitch about then him taking two 1.5-second glances at the sun (which is what the full video of he and his family on the White House balcony showed). The cheap shots like this are why people think Trump can't buy a break. Stick to what matters instead of the petty bullshit that didn't amount to anything anyway.

 

No. 1 rule of war: Never get in a land war in Afghanistan.

All other rules: See rule No. 1.

 

Leopards, faces, same as it ever was.

A coal country dispute over an alleged Trump promise unmet