Posted on 11/16/2020 9:50:36 AM PST by Kaslin
A reprioritization of America’s strategic interests would cement the legacy of the first president in the era of great-power rivalry.
n a recent memo advocating a swift U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller gave shape to the fundamental political stand of the Trump administration—realism and restraint.
“We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end,” the memo read. This comes after a rapid purge in the last couple of weeks, in which President Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark Esper and replaced him with Miller in what was termed by the leftist media as a takeover of the Pentagon by the National Counterterrorism Center.
Trump also appointed Col. Douglas Macgregor to be a senior adviser at the Pentagon. Macgregor is a fierce opponent of endless wars, and previously nominated to be the ambassador to Germany, but was not yet confirmed.
This has the potential to conclude America’s longest and perhaps most pointless of military engagements. While the idea was to decimate al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban, that was over by 2005. By the time of the surge in 2007, the overall war had morphed into a nation-building process with a sunk cost fallacy.
The war proponents’ argument was circular. Put simply, they claim continuous U.S. engagement is needed so the Taliban doesn’t come to power, because the Taliban is terrible for Afghan women. Therefore Afghan civil society needs indefinite American troops and treasure.
Unfortunately, personnel is policy, and since President Trump was an outsider, he had to rely on insiders at odds with his policy, like John Bolton. His retrenchment instinct was constantly hampered by career insiders, which in an earlier era might have bordered on treacherous behavior.
Consider, for example, that a Washington Post journalist found amusing a career bureaucrat explaining on record how he simply lied about troop numbers in Syria to his commander in chief in order to stop a U.S. troop pullout, despite the fact that the majority of Americans oppose any U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Not only does that directly contravene the chain of command, but it is also a criminal offense. Electoral politics has no meaning in this context when unelected bureaucrats decide foreign policy regardless of public opinion or elections, like Roman Praetorian Guards.
The current Trump nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, Will Ruger, understands that. As an insider and one of the foremost voices among conservative realist circles, he said what is now evident to a lot of observers, and will be a lesson for future conservative leadership: unless the administrative team is willing to follow through with the president’s policies, there’s zero value in conservative electoral wins.
In a New York Times interview, Ruger was quoted saying, “The president has had difficulty finding personnel who would faithfully execute on his preferences,” adding that now is the last chance for Trump to cement his legacy and stand for what he believed during his campaigning: ending fruitless wars.
But to purely blame hysterical public opinion is also not appropriate. For example, one of the most interesting related phenomena has been the transformation of former liberals into raging, mindless war hawks. That is partly due to the intense polarization of American politics, and partly due to the overwhelming majority of leftists in news media, that even bipartisan ideas like troop pullout get muddied.
Not just Republicans, but also a majority of Democrats desire a U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan. But that is not reflected in the media’s loudest voices. So-called right-of-center voices in national media are also mostly neoconservatives like Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin. So the actual majority is practically unrepresented in the mainstream conversation.
The cumulative effect of this is observable on Twitter replies. The moment a U.S. troop pullout was announced, there were thousands of people, mostly middle-aged liberals, arguing that this must surely be because President Trump is under final orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin to “weaken” the American hand in Afghanistan.
Politics is inherently surreal, but this must be one of the worst aspects of the last four years of resistance drama. A genuine bipartisan attempt to wind down massive wastage was resisted by an entrenched bureaucracy and cheered by media and a hapless social media mob whipped to the extremes of hysteria.
Taking U.S. troops out of the Middle East should have been done a while back, but is a politically prudent thing to do now anyway. That’s because, one, Trumpism is the future of conservatism. Whatever happens, the biggest long-term legacy of Trump is pushing neoconservatives to their former parent party, the Democrats. The future conservative party will be a party of realism and restraint. Meaningless wars will not be a vote winner.
The global balance of power also means other great powers will have more influence in other regions, like the Middle East. Conversely, there will be places where nothing will be in the American interest. Post-Trump conservatives will do good to internalize that. Pulling out troops from Afghanistan and the Middle East is only the logical endgame for that.
Second, this would put the burden for further deployment and conflicts on the shoulders of future Democrat presidents. What could be a sweeter parting gift to the “party of resistance”?
No, just endless occupation. Many troops however have left Germany already in the 1990s. Some of the posts were given to the German military
Pull out of places that have no value, i.e. Afghanistan.
Those places that have a strategic value to us, stay.
Don’t lump all together.
Afghanistan is a pile of rocks where the only thing of interest to us are the bad-guys that are there. There never was a need to build huge bases and have a massive footprint there since your orientation is on the enemy, not terrain, and nation building was and remains out of scope.
The way you deal with a place like that is by occasionally giving that place a visit with some MH helo’s, killing a lot of bad guys, and then leaving, or to shoot a Tomahawk on someone you don’t like, or visiting the place with some 500 lbs’ers as carry on baggage.
All you do by stationing a lot of people there is to create a lot of targets for the enemy. You end up wasting a lot of money pretending that American values and this idea of “democracy” is some universal idea everyone yearns for, bullshit.
If you are familiar with senior officer ranks, those slaps on the wrist effectively end a career. Unless a General said f-you Trump, a courts martial will not happen. You make them damaged goods with no promotion potential.
Psst, mixing meds is a bad idea, just sayin’... My
Good ideas.
Why don’t you go and have a look at the declaration that the President issued this past spring and if you don’t think that order has brought us down the very road of tyranny then I’m not only who shouldn’t be mixing meds with drinks.
Also if you don’t think for a second that the Russian-China axis alliance together with their proxy surrogates, along with the Islamist Jihadists are not after destroying the United states in order to gain global worldwide dominance/governance than your a bigger dumbass than what you already are.
Just sayin
I’ve come to the realization that it’s not left who brought down the country they’ve always been scumbags it’s conservatives like yourself who helped usher in the poison that tainted the tree of liberty and freedom at one time American conservatives stood for the greater good in everything then within a blink of an eye totally enabled everything that was stood against why? Some for greed some because they were afraid not to and others because deep down they really never were true conservatives too begin with.
Agree. The US has been in Afghanistan for longer than some of the soldiers involved have been alive. Enough is enough.
So bouncing the rubble for decades, wasting the lives of thousands of our best people and spending trillions of dollars; all to no discernible purpose is the test of ideological purity?
“....name it war!”
Can’t. War requires a country to deal with and recognize select people that represent or are the enemy. Know any? I don’t on record. I do off.
“This began with the Democrats at Mi Lai.”
Interesting enough, all the conflicts we have had over the last hundred years are based out of the Paris Peace Conference in 1920, and signed by Woodrow Wilson, a very liberal democrat. But, treaties is treaties. Unless the president decides to ignore them even without recognized direct combat like Iraq.
The killing of Bin Laden is a perfect example. Obama sent troops in to a sovereign country, Pakistan, and murdered an unarmed person which violates the Geneva Convention, our Rules of Combat, and the rules of the U.N. So was Mi Lai any different. It just depends on who needs to say anything derogatory about it, and doesn’t have the pelotas to do so.
rwood
Former GOP Rep Calls Crenshaw Immoral Criticizing Troop Draw-Down. Crenshaw Fires, ‘My Friends Risking Their Lives Understand A Basic Truth That You Refuse To: This Enemy Wants To Kill Us’
Hank Berrien
Nov 18, 2020
https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-gop-rep-calls-crenshaw-immoral-criticizing-troop-draw-down-crenshaw-fires-my-friends-risking-their-lives-understand-a-basic-truth-that-you-refuse-to-this-enemy-wants-to-kill-us
(Snip)
“Get real. You resort to name calling and then falsely play the victim of name calling with a made-up quote. Perpetual war is immoral and dangerous. You should stop excusing it. https://t.co/srvB8EIqzo
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) November 18, 2020”
” Immoral? Based on? My friends risking their lives understand a basic truth that you refuse to: this enemy wants to kill us. Protecting America’s flank is indeed “moral,” a basic duty of govt, and yes, dangerous. Thankfully we have people willing to take that risk when you won’t. https://t.co/8F5bGLlpEm
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) November 18, 2020
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