Issues Under Fire: Kaboom In Kabul

 

Issues Under Fire: Kaboom In Kabul 

Last month, Donald Trump authorized U.S. forces to drop a "MOAB"(Mother of All Bombs) on an ISIS target in Afghanistan. Yesterday, we saw the response. After a massive car bomb went off in central Kabul near the presidential palace and foreign embassies, 90 people were killed and more than 400 were wounded. If the intent of the U.S. "MOAB" strike was meant to send a message, one must admit, whomever America is fighting these days in Afghanistan got it. Unfortunately, the U.S. is now faced with finding a way to answer the message the Afghan militants just sent. And with the Trump administration making the decisions, that could be a problem.

The Trump administration is facing unprecedented challenges just trying to stay one step ahead of criminal investigators. It must be next to impossible to plan, strategize and consider all options for fighting a war, while fending off daily requests for records and documents to be scrutinized by a Special Counsel. How do you even think straight when you have no idea who's next to be called on to testify before Congress? Things like troop levels, timeframes, exit strategies and cost considerations are difficult to focus on when daily leaks and anonymous sources are consuming your every thought. 

Afghanistan is a hellhole. It's a place said to be where empires go to die. From Alexander the Great, to the British Empire, to the Soviet Union, all have been defeated by the Afghan resistance. No matter how badly they're outgunned or outmanned, nobody has outlasted the Afghan people in a fight in more than two millennia. Yet, Donald Trump finds himself in the unenviable position of coming up with a plan to do what no other empire has even come close to accomplishing militarily and he's gotta do it while in full crisis mode.

Two previous presidents struggled with the Taliban, and eventually al-Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan. They spent billions recruiting, training and arming the Afghan army and police. They spent even more to incentivize Afghan warlords to join the fight against militants or in some cases, to just stay the hell out of it. According to the Military Times, by 2010, troop levels had risen to 100,000 and things were still going badly. Desperate to meet his campaign promise to end the war, President Obama began a slow but steady drawdown. Bringing the number of U.S. forces below 10,000 by the end of his presidency, Barack Obama was forced to pass the unsolvable Afghan conflict to Donald Trump. 

As smart and capable a president as Barack Obama was, even he found wars are never won in Afghanistan, because they never actually end. When empires finally realize that historic fact, they simply walk away. Alexander the Great did it, the British Empire did it and the Soviet Union did it. And they all walked away with a limp. Currently, Afghanistan is America's longest war and there is no reason to believe the U.S. will fare any better than the invading empires. So, to think Donald Trump, a man with all his "issues" can fight the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS in a hellhole like Afghanistan, would take a stretch of the imagination few are capable of.

Bottom line: Within the next few days, Donald Trump will have to come before the American people and tell them he's sending thousands of troops to fight militants in Afghanistan. He'll have to explain why he's doing it, how much longer the war will take and why Americans should even give a damn anymore. That's not an easy task for any president, let alone one being investigated by the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee and the FBI, while a Special Counsel is silently snooping around in the background. Podcast below