US President Donald Trump has given a speech to announce that he will be extending the United States Military intervention in Afghanistan. This is a change of pace, since he once called US military intervention in the nation a “complete waste” of resources. He admitted in the speech that his initial gut feeling was to “pull out,” but his top advisors have managed to change his mind, so he’s going to expand the American military presence in Afghanistan yet again. It’s been 16 years since George W. Bush started the conflict, and it looks like it’ll be many more before someone ends it.
Trump was vague in describing his new strategy, left details out
The speech was televised and delivered to US soldiers at Fort Myer in the state of Virginia. During the speech, Trump pledged a new military strategy in Afghanistan and areas of South Asia. He was very vague about this strategy, however, since he didn’t even mention the basic, essential details: how many new troops would be deployed, how long they will stay in Afghanistan, or what the actual goal is. These are things the troops would kind of need to know.
Trump did pledge that he would be placing more duties and responsibilities on the Afghan government to start helping out more, with both the innocent civilians and the military presence, and holding them more accountable.
He also promised to do the same with the Pakistani government, who have been providing militants with support to find safe places to stay along the border of Afghanistan. The US President also warned the not-so-subtly named Islamabad that they would have “much to lose” if they decided to had any problems with doing what he says.
Hmm.
And remember ex-President (unfortunately) Barack Obama’s rhetoric about international conflicts, about handling them as peacefully as possible and helping ailing nations to build up again? Well, not with Donald Trump. He’s taking a very different tactic. His approach is slightly more based on counter-terrorism. Speaking about what his plans for South Asia are, he made that perfectly clear: “We are not nation-building again.
We are killing terrorists.” Right. At least he’s not being vague about that.
Trump’s speech suggested that not much would change for the troops
Despite his fierce, “We are killing terrorists!” soundbite, the way Trump elaborated on these plans in his speech at Fort Myer alluded to the idea that, actually, not very much would change in terms of what the troops have to do over in Afghanistan.
Trump wants them to go after terrorists, but that’s what they are doing already. The job they’re doing as things are now is striking terrorist groups wherever they find them, but at the same time, doing everything in their power (this goes for diplomats too, by the way) to help the Afghan government and their military and whatever they’re doing to fix the nation’s problems.
It seems that Trump wants to put a stop to that second thing, the one that benefits a country other than America. There’s also the objective of pressing Islamabad and Kabul to chip in more.
Throughout the speech, Trump, as always, made it his business to avoid falling into any traps that could require him to reveal details. The reason he provided for this was because when Obama was open about military strategies in his televised speeches, all the enemy has to do to find out what the US military forces are going to do to them is go on YouTube and watch the speech. So, he does have a pretty good reason behind it, to be fair. For once, it’s not to cover his own backside – it’s to cover America’s backside. Trump also added that the major military decision will be decided by “conditions on the ground and not arbitrary timetables.” Not too bad, not too bad...
