Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

With Afghanistan Address, Trump Pleased Long-Time Rivals And Upset Allies
The Daily Caller ^ | 8/22/2017 | ALEX PFEIFFER

Posted on 08/22/2017 12:01:11 PM PDT by TBP

President Donald Trump’s commitment to an indefinite war in Afghanistan Monday night received praise from rivals such as Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, but left conservatives like Ann Coulter disappointed.

Trump criticized the Afghanistan war before entering office. However, in his nation-wide address he said he will not give an end date for the conflict and wouldn’t talk about potential troop deployments. There are roughly 8,400 American service members in Afghanistan and it was widely reported Trump will deploy an additional 4,000 troops.

Shortly after the speech, Sen. Graham said on Fox News, “I am very pleased with this plan, and I am very proud of my president.”

Graham and Trump have butted heads for a while on foreign policy. He said in a November interview that “to put ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘foreign policy’ in the same sentence is a stretch. This is not his area. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

The South Carolina senator also praised Trump during his last aggressive move when he launched airstrikes against Syria in April. Another GOP senator who has had qualms with Trump’s foreign policy is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who tweeted Monday night, “Good [Afghan strategy] & excellent speech by [President Trump] laying it out to the nation.” Trump subsequently retweeted this to his millions of followers.

On the other hand, various conservative writers who have been supportive of Trump’s nationalist agenda were upset by the president’s plan for Afghanistan. Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Who’s going to pay for it? What is our measure of success? We didn’t win with 100K troops. How will we win with 4,000 more?”

While, Ann Coulter, who wrote “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome,” tweeted, “It doesn’t matter who you vote for. The military-industrial complex wins. Only difference: GOP presidents pronounce ‘Pakistan’ correctly.”

Pat Buchanan, who arguably represented Trump’s agenda decades before the president ran, wrote a column in which he stated: “Trump, however, was elected to end America’s involvement in Middle East wars. And if he has been persuaded that he simply cannot liquidate these wars — Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan — he will likely end up sacrificing his presidency, trying to rescue the failures of those who worked hardest to keep him out of the White House.”


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; afghanwar; cictrump; nevertrump; third100days; trump; trumpafghanspeech; trumpcicspeech; trumpdod; trumpgwot; trumpspeech; war
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last
A policy that pleases his enemies and upsets his friends is probably not a good policy.
1 posted on 08/22/2017 12:01:11 PM PDT by TBP
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: TBP

Let me know when he comes up with such a policy.


2 posted on 08/22/2017 12:02:48 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (Exempting Trump and his team, our media and government have adopted the Zoolander management style.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

You seem to be on a tear today.

You aren’t going to separate Trump from his voters, just so you know.


3 posted on 08/22/2017 12:06:20 PM PDT by chris37 (Donald J. Trump, Tom Brady, The Patriots... American Destiny!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

While, Ann Coulter, who wrote “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome,” tweeted, “It doesn’t matter who you vote for. The military-industrial complex wins. Only difference: GOP presidents pronounce ‘Pakistan’ correctly.”

Well, Okay, Miss Expert - what’s YOUR solution? Bring everyone home from Afghanistan, make all the deaths there meaningless and turn it into a vast terrorist training camp?

I didn’t think you had an answer, there, Annie.


4 posted on 08/22/2017 12:07:27 PM PDT by Pravious
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pravious

So your answer is perpetual war and perpetual bloodshed?


5 posted on 08/22/2017 12:08:37 PM PDT by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: TBP

Show me exactly where in his speech, last evening, President Trump committed us to “indefinite” war? I’ll wait ....


6 posted on 08/22/2017 12:08:55 PM PDT by JME_FAN
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

All you and your twit never-Trump pansies got is strawman arguments. YOU and YOUR fellow travelers are only ones suggesting “perpetual war.” False premise begets further falsehoods.

The “last 16 years,” blah-blah-blah ... conveniently omits the fact that the last two presidents were not interested in fighting to win, but rather in prosecuting a war as though it were a court battle, having bullsh*t ROEs that served not American interests, but rather ensured our enemy held its tenacious foothold in the region, and further expand it.

Of course, the reality of facts on the ground does not fit the asinine narrative of quislings and quitters - and the same individuals believe the rest of us cannot see through their “perpetual” bullsh*t


7 posted on 08/22/2017 12:18:26 PM PDT by JME_FAN
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: TBP

Look, when we first went into Afghanistan we made major progress. It was a Special Ops war with extremely canny warriors. We started losing when we tried to make it a conventional war.

If Trump let’s our war fighters do what they do best, if the media is kept at bay, we can wrap it up and get out of there


8 posted on 08/22/2017 12:21:25 PM PDT by McGavin999 ("The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood."Thomas Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

“Trump criticized the Afghanistan war before entering office.”

Not true.


9 posted on 08/22/2017 12:22:07 PM PDT by nikos1121 (Let's get Newt in there to help...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

“So your answer is perpetual war and perpetual bloodshed?”

So your answer is just another question?


10 posted on 08/22/2017 12:24:47 PM PDT by Parley Baer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: TBP

It saddens me to see this rope-a-dope done to President Trump.

Since the 4th century BC, nobody has ever been successful in Afghanistan.

Even Alexander the Great gave up.

“Alexander’s mother Olympias wrote him a letter, getting on his case for taking so long to knock off these primitive, poverty-stricken Afghans. So Alexander captured three tribal chiefs and sent them back to Macedonia, each one carrying an offering of soil from his own tribal homeland; they were supposed to deliver these tokens to Olympias as a gift from her son. But waiting outside the queen’s palace door, the three chiefs got into a fight and killed one another. Alexander’s Mom wrote back: ‘Now I understand, my son.’”

Afghanistan isn’t actually a country with a government. It’s a thousand warring feudal tribes in a single geographical region with none of them caring what happens to the others. You can defeat or annihilate half of them and nothing would change; they’d still continue fighting each other and you.


11 posted on 08/22/2017 12:30:36 PM PDT by BuffaloJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

So your answer is perpetual war and perpetual bloodshed?

Oh, I dunno - how about the answer our President gave yesterday - don’t nation-build. Kill terrorists. I don’t see that as “perpetual war and perpetual bloodshed,” since the country WILL eventually run out of terrorists.


12 posted on 08/22/2017 12:31:34 PM PDT by Pravious
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: TBP

Inevitably we are to be balcanized to the core. Right down to FReeper against FReeper.

Daily Caller, Drudge and Breitbart splitting up the solidarity of the Trump base is key to bringing back RINO Rule, UniParty capitulation to the god of Globalism.

Free Willie has become “FREE TRUMP”.


13 posted on 08/22/2017 12:37:56 PM PDT by RitaOK (Viva Christo Rey! Public Education/Academia are the farm team for more Marxists coming... infinitum.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

Really? What speech was that? I thought he said he wanted to win. Sorry I’ll listen more closely next time.


14 posted on 08/22/2017 12:40:39 PM PDT by jmaroneps37 (Conservatism is truth. Liberalism is lies.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RitaOK

FReeper vs. FReeper is nothing new. Remember the great Giuiliani exodus?

It’s funny how the anti-Trump / never-Trump / Cruzer-types lose no opportunity to rear their heads here and spew anti-Trump nonsense.

On the other side, his base (which I am proudly a member of) is loyal to the core and CAN’T be turned against him. So . . . worry not :-).


15 posted on 08/22/2017 12:43:17 PM PDT by Pravious
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: TBP

He pleased this ally and friend greatly!!


16 posted on 08/22/2017 12:48:04 PM PDT by elpadre (AfganistaMr Obama said the goal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-hereQaeda" and its allies.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBP

You have no more of an idea what the new plan looks like or how it will be implemented than anyone outside of his inner circle. Just because he did not drop and run at this specific time is all you care to focus on.

But, it appears our guys have ISIS caught in a pincher between Raqqa and Al Qa’im along the Euphrates. Not heard much about what is going on in Raqqa but it appears that faction is also encircled. Action in and around Dier Ez-Zor is being levied by virtually everyone against ISIS and they are taking heavy, heavy losses.

So, just like we are not being told what our tactics and plans/successes are in those areas, I would wager we will see the same to be totally counter what has been done. Just that the ROE’s are being trimmed dramatically tells me the plan is to do exactly what was needed all along. Kill people and break things. No safe harbor.

What is more important is what he did not mention. Just think about those for a while. If you can’t build a list then you have no more of an idea what it he did tell you as you did of what he didn’t.


17 posted on 08/22/2017 12:54:58 PM PDT by mazda77
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: TBP

Before Trump took office, ISIS was an “intractable” problem in Iraq and Syria.

My how things can change when a real leader takes over.


18 posted on 08/22/2017 1:04:08 PM PDT by keat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: nikos1121

He called for us to pull out in 2013.

So, yes true.


19 posted on 08/22/2017 1:30:56 PM PDT by WVMnteer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Pravious

That’s simply not true. I’ve seen a lot of people, me included, who were never never trumpers or anti trump as you call them that don’t like this. We can be free thinkers. We don’t have to agree and follow him like puppies.
It’s not a damn cult.


20 posted on 08/22/2017 1:43:52 PM PDT by sheana
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson