Posted on 07/06/2017 9:29:28 AM PDT by GIdget2004
WASHINGTON—A few days after President Donald Trump gave his Pentagon chief the unilateral authority last month to send thousands of American troops to Afghanistan at his own discretion, the White House sent classified guidance that effectively limits the number of forces.
The memo, sent to a small group of administration officials from national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster —said that the president would let Defense Secretary Jim Mattis send no more than 3,900 troops to Afghanistan without coming back to confer with the White House, according to people familiar with the document.
The conflicting messages reflect divisions that have surfaced in the Trump administration as it tries to develop a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan, amid concerns about diving back into a 16-year-old conflict that has claimed more than 2,400 American lives and cost the U.S. $2.4 trillion.
Mr. Mattis said he hopes to present a plan to the White House by mid-July that will give the U.S.-led coalition the forces it needs to blunt Taliban momentum.
The rise of Islamic State in Afghanistan and the Afghan army’s inability to keep Taliban forces from gaining momentum have created more urgency in Washington on the need for a new strategy for a conflict U.S. officials say is at a dangerous stalemate.
But the strategic planning is tangled in disagreements between factions in the White House and across the administration who disagree on what the U.S. goals should be in Afghanistan, whether to jump-start peace talks with the Taliban and how much pressure to put on Pakistan, according to current and former U.S. officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
No blank check is good.
Leaked classified info is bad.
Maybe this signals that Trump is starting to take control of the military rather than just letting Mattis effectively drive US policy by his military decisions
It’s past time
From the WSJ? I DO NOT trust the WSJ!
From the WSJ? I DO NOT trust the WSJ!
___________________________________________
^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^
THANKS FOR SHARING MEDIA!
Pull out of Afghanistan, invade Saudi Arabia.
“... the White House sent classified guidance...”
If it was “classified”, how do they know?
Oh, I forgot, it’s okay for the media to know.
I hope there are multiple versions of the memo that were sent, with slightly different numbers in each one.
It’s called....results. We do not know what the level should be. We’re looking for results.
We’ve been there 16 years, at a cost of 2400+ US lives and several trillion dollars and the objective for this latest troop increase is to ‘blunt Taliban momentum’?
What on earth are we doing there?
Who leaked the classified memo? Someone needs to be fired and jailed
Results huh? This has already lasted four times longer than Pearl Harbor to the Surrender in Tokyo bay. Afghanistan isn’t any closer to being settled than it was 6 months after we arrived.
Please tell us what victory looks like there. You cannot seriously believe that we will somehow form them into a stable peaceful nation ruled by law. We are already fighting against kids born after, or who were mere toddlers when we invaded.
The fact is, that there is no way to “win” a war there. At this point it is simply an endless money teat for the defense world. And of course, now in 2017 about 93% of the worlds non pharmaceutical opiates come from there.....after we have run things for 16 years. That’s probably a coincidence.
With all respect to the general, what is he smoking? We have waste bins full of failed plans, and graveyards full of our dead.
The only workable "plan" is to level Afghanistan and leave it a smoking God forsaken ruin. Other than that, the only sensible choice is to get out of there completely. Leave Afghanistan and let Allah sort it out.
There is no upside to hanging around Afghanistan. What started out as a simple plan to get Bin Laden has turned into a futile nation building exercise. Hopeless.
Sort of a non sequitor but I came across this troubling tidbit on Wikipedia: "Before deploying to Iraq, Mattis had his Marines undergo cultural sensitivity training.". Who knows what that entailed.
“What on earth are we doing there?”
We’re stretched too thin and we keep hearing that Obama and Congress have allowed the military to atrophy.
I’m sure Afghanistan is a threat to some degree, but we can’t do it all at once, and we need to be prepared should a larger, more immediate threat emerge.
And there is always the question, if you defeat your enemy how do you fill the vacuum? Maybe the 50 Muslim countries Trump addressed in Saudi Arabia will step in to help, maybe they won’t.
No more nation building.
We should unilaterally and immediately withdraw from Afghanistan.
We have no interests there.
Zip.
Nada.
Not leaked.
Fake news; if leaked, it is from Trump.
This president does not let the enemy know troop levels or bomb levels or level of levels. Nada. WSJ is a leftist rag now and they are used to Obama telling our enemy what we are doing.
Get them out of there not worth dead troops.
Mattis talks a lot. He says a lot of tough things. He prosecuted Marines who fought their way out of a near ambush IED.
Why are we still in Afghanistan? just wondering...
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