Discussion: Trump Agreed To New Afghan Plan After Months Of Angry Resistance, Infighting

So Trump actually hates the plan. This certainly bodes well for long-term success. I’m sure he’ll stick with it when things get tough.

He’s probably asking his lawyers to check if there’s a court in Afghanistan that will accept a bankruptcy filing on the war effort.

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It was clear from watching, not just the words of that part of the speech but his awkwardness in delivering it that he has no idea of the history of India and Pakistan, the conflict over Kashmir and their respective relations with the US. I think he thinks India can pressure Pakistan as (he thinks) China can pressure North Korea.

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India can certainly pressure Pakistan - it can pressure Pakistan right into launching a nuke into the middle of Calcutta.

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It’s possible McMaster did that not because he thinks it’s good evidence, but because he knows it’s far more likely to get through to Trump than anything that’s, y’know, actually relevant. Because Trump doesn’t do subtlety. Cause-and-effect has to be spelled out very plainly for him.

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Sputter!!! Sorry, I know that’s not funny, and you’re right. Profound ignorance is profoundly dangerous.

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Unfortunately - yes it is. It’s more scary to me than NoKorea.

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Sure he does! We are going to “win”…by sacrificing more U.S. military personnel in a (civil) war we never should have gotten involved with in the first place. Thanks again, Bush/Cheney, heckuva job.

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If Trump wants to emulate Russia, then he needs to pull us out of Afghanistan - they got out.

Otherwise, Afghanistan is where empires go to die.

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As a Dane, I am most anxious to know what “raised Swedish” means ? Lots of “Köttbullar”, “Falukorv” and cinnamon buns ?

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India and Pakistan are allied like cats and dogs.

More like cats and snakes.

Cats and dogs at least have mammalian instincts in common. India and Pakistan, not so much.

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Ok - works for me. :smiley:

We are always just minutes away from a nuclear war between the two.

I think McMaster could have made a better argument if that staged photo showed those women in halter-tops.

BTW, women in Iran were able to dress that "western’ until very recently, as well. The repression of women seems to be most affluent in the culture of our strongest ally in the ME, Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi dress code for women is being implemented full-force in Paul Ryan’s office. Yup. Mr. Ryan is learning quite a lot from those Saudis.

Women in Baghdad dressed in Western attire before we invaded. They had a lot of rights in Iraq since it was the only goddamn secular dictatorship in the Middle East.

So naturally we destroyed it and replaced it with ISIS.

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All of this crap about Trump doing this against his better judgement, and having been dragged to this decision by the generals is being circulated for one purpose: so if it fails, or if anything goes badly, Trump can lay the blame on the generals and remain untouched by it. Anything positive happens, he takes the credit.

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All trump had to hear that Afghanistan have unlimited mineral resource (same as Cheney). There was, however, one new thing that jumped out in the latter half of the speech:

“In this struggle, the heaviest burden will continue to be borne by the good people of Afghanistan and their courageous armed forces. As the prime minister of Afghanistan has promised, we are going to participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us.”

That’s going to require some additional explanation from the White House. The president hopes to recoup some of the costs of the conflict … how exactly?

Afghanistan has over 1400 mineral fields, containing barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, sulfur, talc, zinc among many other minerals.
Mining in Afghanistan - Wikipedia

I was kinda thinking it might be the latter. Know your audience and all that…

There is a reason there are no details to go with this war plan. This is not a plan for the Afghanistan war. This is a ruse to go to war against Iran using Afghanistan as a base.