Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump, unimpressed by the Afghanistan war options presented to him during a White House meeting with his full national security team Wednesday, suggested they may have to go back to the drawing board to craft a strategy that does not mirror the failed ones employed by his predecessors, said an administration official. The meeting came as the Pentagon briefed lawmakers about plans to increase the U.S. military footprint in the country. Contrary to mainstream media claims that the president has taken a completely hands-off approach to the 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, Trump presided...

KABUL (Reuters) – Thirty thousand more U.S. troops for Afghanistan? Esmatullah only shrugged. "Even if they bring the whole of America, they won't be able to stabilize Afghanistan," said the young construction worker out on a Kabul street corner on Wednesday morning. "Only Afghans understand our traditions, geography and way of life." U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement of a massive new escalation of the eight-year-old war seemed to have impressed nobody in the Afghan capital, where few watched the speech on TV before dawn and fewer seemed to think new troops would help. Obama said his goal was to "disrupt,...

Ask Reverend Al Sharpton about Barack Obama's virtues as a presidential candidate and the portly civil rights leader responds with a tortured metaphor about grilling a steak. "We keep hearing sizzle from the media" about Obama, Sharpton told me in an interview yesterday, but "we're not hearing substance." Sharpton, a master of colourful and frequently incendiary rhetoric, never strayed from his talking points during a flurry of meetings in Washington with Democratic presidential hopefuls. "I want to know from Senator Obama where the meat is," he said on MSNBC. Sharpton's lukewarm assessment of Obama has jolted many Democrats caught up...