So does this mean that women wearing miniskirts on the streets of Kabul is going to be the new measure of our success there?
Of course. Itâs DT. They probably added a few âAfghans love youâ in the reports.
Trumpâs Afghan plan is right next to his healthcare plan which is right next to his immigration plan which is right next to his tax plan which is right next to his budget plan. In other words - heâs got nothing.
Totally incompetent and totally mentally unfit to serve.
Remember: when the Germans were sympathetic to the early Nazi and white nationalist movement it led to the rise of Hitler and worldâs greatest human tragedy in the Holocaust. Even though the Trump family was expelled from Germany when his grandfather refused to serve in the military and pay his taxes, little lying Donnie should at least have learned the lesson that the Germans have clearly learned. But instead, Trump has emboldened the Nazi moevement in the US as well as the white nationalists and white supremacists and the KKK. These organization should NOT be tolerated or sympathized with or allowed to hide behind the US Constitution as free speech. Hate speech and racism is NOT free speech - PERIOD. They need to be stomped out of existence in the US.
The whole world is watchingâŚand Trump is screwing up over and over again!
And hopefully halter tops to show progress beyond!
âWeâre losing,â Trump said, according to an anonymous person in the room who spoke with the Times. âWhat does success look like?â
âŚ
McMaster showed Trump a photograph from 1972 of Afghan women walking through Kabul in miniskirts
Asked and answered.
But seriously, and it pains me greatly to type this, Trump asked exactly the right question. I doubt he has the mental capacity to understand the least thing about any answers he received, but his âinstinctâ, I guess, was correct.
Tell us, generals, what does success look like, specifically? ISIS pushed out of cities A, B, and C? A set of written anti-corruption laws, with enforcement mechanisms, for Kabul? HOW DO WE KNOW WEâVE âWONâ?
Anywho, Trump distances himself from âthe generalsâ planâ in 3âŚ2âŚ1âŚ
âDuring the aidesâ battle for Trumpâs support, McMaster showed Trump a photograph from 1972 of Afghan women walking through Kabul in miniskirts to prove that it was possible for the country to adopt Western norms, the newspaper reported.â
So how many terrorist do we need to kill to unlock mini-skirts? I mean thatâs how this works right? You kill a certain number of terrorists and then suddenly you unlock the mini-skirt skin pack, like in a video game? No need for diplomacy or outreach or a functioning State Department. Just need to rack up the kill count and bam everyoneâs walking around in mini-skirts, right?
âWhat does success look like?â
And the answer is?
Since itâs a narrative of the meeting presented after the fact, a cynic might suspect Trump never asked anything that coherent. Probably more like âwhat are you doinâ?â or âthis is a total disaster! Total mess! What are you going to do about it?â (emphasis on âyouâ since Trump never associates anything negative with himself) Then the attendees translated Trump-speak into something vaguely intelligible
Also totally agree with the point you and others have made. What does success look like? Even an approximate description is notable by its absence, even a day later
If McMaster really, truly used that photo as evidence Afghanistan could be a modern, âWesternizedâ country â and that that, in turn, was justification for continued foreign military involvement â then my opinion of him just decreased a million-fold. I thought he was more knowledgeable than that. The concern about leaving a security vacuum that IS-inspired radicals will fill is at least coherent, whether one agrees with it or not. Not so the mini-skirt bullshit.
The total substance of Trumpâs new âstrategyâ was summed-up when he announced that success and eventual withdrawal would henceforth be based on achieving a specific set of goals â and then failed to tell us what the goals where.
So, Trumpâs real strategy is that weâll be in Afghanistan until we decide (or are forced) to leave based on undefined conditions.
Real genius at work.
Same here. If this is what the supposedly brilliant and learned McMaster (whom all the pundits slobber over) really thinks about other countries â that they need to adopt âourâ norms and that revealing skirts are the measure of that â then he is as prejudiced and ignorant as Trump, Bannon and their ilk. Of course it is possible that his action was purely tactical â he showed Trump something he thought would have meaning and appeal to him.
I think it was clever of him, tbh. RT does not equal endorsement)
Well here we are - WWIII - just load India up on Pakistanâs border and watch it develop.
Genius!
Who knew that coming up with an Afghan war strategy could be so complicated? Especially for a really really rich deal maker who was actually born in the United States. Even with the help of Putin and his foreign born wives (2 out of 3), Trump wonât be any better at this than Bush2 or Obama.
He has no new strategy, just the old strategy, without specific goals and without numbers of new troops put in harmâs way. How will 4000 extra troops make a difference? The only thing possibly ânewâ were the vague threats to Pakistan and India (??11). I had the impression he thinks that India and Pakistan are somehow allied. Or that their relationship is sort of like that of China and North Korea.
The speech was actually rather weird, although Iâm assuming McMaster or Kelly wrote it.
Yup, âweirdâ = Trump.
My feeling in watching the speech was that it was as much about deflecting attention from Trumpâs other problems as it was about the topic at hand. In that context, McMasterâs primary job was to keep Trump from wrecking himself on national TV, rather than to articulate a âstrategyâ (something that Trump is incapable of understanding, much less formulating).
And, the wierdest part of the speech for me was the bit about Pakistan/India cooperating in Afghanistan. What utter B.S.!
Well I remember what Obama finally told someone was the one thing that kept him awake at night as president. Pakistan.
India and Pakistan are allied like cats and dogs.
I donât think any president has had a good plan to get us out of Afghanistan; similarly, I donât think the Trump plan is any better or worse (though refusing to announce goals or troop levels prevents any criticism or accountability, which is clever in a feral sort of way).
That said, the opposite of bad isnât always good. It is actually a positive development that heâs moving closer to the Obama approach instead of reflexively inverting everything his better did.
Of course, the response that would enrage him would be: âMr. President, thank you for adopting the Obama plan in Afghanistan. It shows you can learn from your mistakes.â I wouldnât want hundreds of people tweeting that to himâit might push him over the edge. 
Trump was raised Swedish (kind of â during WWII Fred started telling everyone he was Swedish to avoid anti-German sentiment), so he may not have learned anything from German history. Then again, Trump doesnât need a particular reason to be ignorant.