A hobbled commander in chief tries to rally the country - By Jennifer Rubin
At a low ebb in his presidency, amidst questions about his judgment and mental stability, President Trump on Monday night asked the country to trust him in sending more troops into the nation’s longest war. Coming after his panned tweet to throw transgender people out of the military and his incendiary remarks about Charlottesville, his paean to military cohesion and diversity rang hollow. (“The men and women of our military operate as one team, with one shared mission and one shared sense of purpose,” he said. “They transcend every line of race, ethnicity, creed, and color to serve together and sacrifice together in absolutely perfect cohesion. That is because all service members are brothers and sisters. They are all part of the same family. It’s called the American family. They take the same oath, fight for the same flag, and live according to the same law.”) At times he seemed to be defensively rewriting his remarks on Charlottesville. (“Love for America requires love for all of its people. When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.”)
What we did learn was the “America First” has no meaning (other than to deceive gullible isolationists). Aside from that and a general disposition toward “winning,” we did not hear with any specificity how he intends to achieve victory or even how he defines “victory.” Trump laid out a standard, mainstream view on the need to avoid defeat in Afghanistan:
First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives. The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory. . . . Second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11. . . . Third and finally, I concluded that the security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense. Today, 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The highest concentration in any region anywhere in the world. For its part, Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror. The threat is worse because Pakistan and India are two nuclear-armed states, whose tense relations threat to spiral into conflict, and that could happen.
Unfortunately, the means to achieve victory seemed both vague and insufficient. “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on,” he said. (That’s fine, but could we get a ballpark figure to assess whether the commitment is sufficient to obtain the desired result?) One platitude followed another. “Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power, diplomatic, economic, and military, toward a successful outcome.” But have we not been doing that for almost 16 years? The result hardly sounded like a definitive victory. (“Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban and Afghanistan, but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen. America will continue its support for the Afghan government and the Afghan military as they confront the Taliban in the field.”)
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/08/22/a-hobbled-commander-in-chief-tries-to-rally-the-country/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.714b599e1e1b
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