Trump's New Strategy For Afghanistan Is Neither New, Nor A Strategy, Nor Trump's

Authored by James George Jatras via The Stratgic Culture Foundation,

For some time it has been clear that the White House of President Donald Trump was convulsed with a struggle among various court factions vying for the Emperor’s ear. Crudely oversimplified, these are variously described as:

1. The military «Junta» (Generals McMaster, National Security Council; Mattis, Pentagon; and Kelly, White House Chief of Staff;

2. The Goldman-Sachs «Globalists» (preeminently First Daughter Ivanka and First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner);

3. The «Populist-Nationalists» («the two Steves» Bannon and Miller); and

4. The Regular Republicans who, to their credit, in 2016 chose to join the Trump populist movement over more conventionally «conservative» GOP candidates (Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway).

It is understood that the first two factions were generally allied against the second two. Following Priebus’s ouster, the bellwether would be who got tossed out next: Bannon or McMaster. It was Bannon.

On August 18, with Bannon’s defenestration, it became clear that the Junta and the Globalists were firmly in charge. The only outliers left – besides somebody named Trump – are Conway and Miller. We’ll see how long they last. Any of them.

The immediate impact of the Junta/Globalist victory in the internal struggle was renewed sharp rhetoric against North Korea (Bannon’s suggestion the there was no acceptable military option may have been one proximate cause of his ejection) and, even more so, Trump’s speech on Afghanistan on August 21 in front of a military audience.

Before addressing the specifics, it’s important to note that his remarks not only signaled a humiliating defeat of Trumpism within Trump’s own administration but reflected the damage done by the vicious attacks he has suffered for speaking the truth about events in Charlottesville.

His offense: to affirm that responsibility for violence lay not only with the «white nationalists» but also with the armed Antifa «protesters» bent on attacking them. In fact, to anyone with a fair mind watching the TV coverage, it was clear that the violence overwhelmingly came from the latter, abetted by the evidently deliberate decision of Virginia Governor and likely 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Terry McAuliffe to withdraw police separation of the two sides and herd the nationalists up against Antifa.

While not mentioning Charlottesville by name, the entire beginning section of Trump’s Afghanistan speech – his first prime time televised address to the nation as president – stuck to a politically correct script, ritually intoning that «there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.» (In yet another zigzag, the very next night, at a rally with cheering supporters in Phoenix, Trump read back aloud his previous comments on Charlottesville and denounced Antifa. The media, notably CNN, dissolved in a deranged fit of rage.)

As to what he now plans for Afghanistan:

It’s not new, it’s same-old same-old:

Aside from a few Trumpish rhetorical flourishes, it was a speech that could have been given by President Hillary Clinton or President Jeb Bush. In substance, it was a rehash of the failures of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Only a few details changed. He will loosen rules of engagement for U.S. forces, which among other things will mean more dead Afghans and more Taliban recruits. He will boost troop numbers but won’t tell the enemy – or the American people – by how many; the number 4,000 has been kicked around, but who knows. Finally, no timetables will «guide our strategy», just «conditions on the ground», but what those conditions need to be for us to finally get out are not described either. Nor is there any clue as to how boosting American numbers to about 13,000 will accomplish what 100,000 couldn’t.

«We will ask our NATO allies and global partners to support our new strategy with additional troop and funding increases in line with our own», said the President. «We are confident they will.»

Pure fantasy. On the other hand, Trump completely ignored Afghanistan’s record opium production. Evidently promising to stamp that out would be just too fantastical.

It’s not a strategy, it’s just a policy:

One of the problems with being entirely guided by military men is their tendency to focus on their tactical tradecraft. Hopefully that’s something they’re good at. But their knowledge and skill, though vitally important, doesn’t of itself constitute a strategy. Or put another way, professional military men can tell a policymaker how to accomplish what he wants, but they can’t tell him what he wants. The result is a policy composed of various tactics that don’t add up to much of anything except more of what we’ve seen since 2001.

We will not engage in nation-building, said Trump, or tell Afghans how to live. This could mean no more nagging them over laws mandating the killing of apostates or about women’s rights. («Don’t throw acid in the face of little girls because they attend school. That’s not nice.») We weren’t doing much of that anyway, but now it’s official: Americans are fighting to make Afghanistan safe for Sharia. (Paradoxically, Trump was reportedly convinced that Afghanistan is not doomed to be a Hobbesian abode of savages by McMaster’s showing him a picture of mini-skirted Afghan female students from the 1970s. As Justin Raimondo points out, the good general surely neglected to mention the reason there are no more mini-skirts to be seen is because of our support, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Mission accomplished!)

On the other hand, is it telling Afghans how to live when Trump promised to root out corruption? (What Americans are calling corruption is what in Afghanistan is usually just called «life.») Indeed, very little was said about what the Afghan government thinks about the «new» plan. But then again, we barely care what Seoul thinks about deploying the THAAD system in South Korea, so why should we ask the opinions of an Afghan government that wouldn’t last a week without American support? One is reminded of the Soviet-era quip that Afghanistan was the most peace-loving country in the world. Why? Because it doesn’t even interfere in its own internal affairs.

Regionally, Trump vowed to force Pakistan to stop providing safe haven for the Taliban (sure, that will work) and to get India more involved. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that in addition to «putting the pressure on Pakistan» Washington would «put the pressure on India that they have to be part of the political solution.» Just like we «pressure» North Korea, or «pressure» China on Korea and the South China Sea, and «pressure» Russia on Syria, Ukraine, what have you. Pressure, pressure, pressure! Doesn’t anyone in Washington know how to talk with anyone to seek common interests? Why no mention of the three regional powers – Russia, China, and Iran – that like India (but unlike Pakistan) don’t want an Afghanistan ruled by Salafists? Now that could be a strategy.

It’s not Trump’s policy, it’s the Swamp’s:

Trump pretty much let the cat out of the bag when he conceded that his first impulse was to get out of Afghanistan. (Interestingly the reflexively pro-war Washington Post and National Review published calls for the U.S. to withdraw our forces, saying Trump’s earlier instinct was right! Be prepared for them to rip out his liver when things turn out badly.) But then Trump talked with the big boys with the short haircuts who explained the facts of life to him. He seems to have bought the Swamp’s line that because Obama «hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq» the result was ISIS. Nonsense. ISIS came into being because (a) we invaded Iraq in the first place and (b) for years Obama armed terrorists seeking to overthrow the government of Syria, continuing a policy in place since the 1980s Afghanistan war against the USSR. Given such assumptions, the most optimistic hope is for a «surge» like that in Iraq in 2007, which at least superficially stabilized Anbar province and Baghdad. Again, very optimistically, that could provide cover for us to withdraw our forces. More likely, given the fear of «hastily and mistakenly» withdrawing Obama-style, we will stay for an indefinite period amounting to a permanent occupation. After all, look how long we’ve been successfully stabilizing Germany, Japan, and South Korea!

The sad fact is that Trump almost certainly knows all this, at least on a gut level. What exactly the exact political alchemy is that has led him to this juncture is open for speculation. But what is not speculative is the grim fact that whether or not this is Trump’s policy, Afghanistan is now Trump’s war.

Watch Live: President Trump Unveils "New Path Forward" For Afghanistan

As we detailed last night, President Trump will unveil his long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan tonight. Will he, as Ron Paul suggests, do the sensible thing and end the failed longest war in history? Or will he continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will "win" the war? Does America even know what "winning" looks like in Afghanistan?

Here"s Ron Paul"s preview (which may be a post-mortem)...

With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump"s inner circle to halt the simmering push for war, we suspect we know the answer, and as The Hill details, here"s what to look for in his speech...

How many more troops?

The United States has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan on a dual mission of training, advising and assisting Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism missions against groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Trump gave Mattis the authority in June to send more troops there, but Mattis has held off deploying any more until Trump finalized a strategy. “I was not willing to make significant troop lifts until we made certain we knew what was the strategy, what was the commitment going in,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him on Sunday. Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said he needs a “few thousand” more troops to break the stalemate against the Taliban. That few thousand is said to equal about 4,000 U.S. troops. Those troops would be used to embed with conventional Afghan forces closer to combat — at the battalion level — and improve the capabilities of the Afghan air force and special operations forces. Nicholson assured the Afghans on Sunday that the U.S. commitment to the country will continue. “I assure you we are with you in this fight. We are with you, and we will stay with you,” Nicholson said during a ceremony at Camp Morehead, a training base for Afghan commandos southeast of Kabul.

What’s the end game?

Trump himself has questioned why America is still in Afghanistan after more than a decade of war. He’ll need to explain to the American people what victory would look like in Afghanistan and how a few thousand additional troops can achieve it when 100,000 before could not. “We’ve been there for now close to 17 years, and I want to find out why we’ve been there for 17 years, how it’s going and what we should do in terms of additional ideas,” Trump said in July. Military officials have described victory as getting the country secure enough to prevent another 9/11-style attack on the United States. To do that, they say, the United States needs to have an open-ended presence to train Afghan forces to be able to fight insurgents and terrorists themselves, as well as to stabilize the Afghan government with anti-corruption and other reform efforts. Officials have also said a negotiated political settlement with the Taliban is the only way to end the conflict, which they say U.S. forces can help with by reversing Taliban battlefield gains and forcing them to the negotiating table.

Will Trump incorporate unconventional ideas?

Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, has been privately and publicly shopping a plan to replace most U.S. troops with contractors. Prince’s plan would include sending 5,500 private military contractors to embed with Afghan forces at the battalion level. They would be supported by a 90-plane private air force. The plan was championed by Bannon, but opposed by Mattis, McMaster, key leaders in Congress and Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. With Bannon gone, the proposal appears dead. Still, Trump is said to have been deeply skeptical of the options the military presented to him. That skepticism could translate into using elements of Prince’s plan. Trump has also expressed interest in mining Afghan’s vast mineral resources, estimated to be worth up to $3 trillion. Ghani reportedly pitched Trump in May on the potential to mine as a way to keep him interested in the country. Trump has stressed a desire for the United States to be paid back for its military support before, such as with NATO. In that vein, he could emphasize the monetary benefits of continued involvement in Afghanistan during his address.

Will Trump mention Nicholson?

Trump reportedly got so fed up with the state of the war and the options being presented to him that he suggested firing Nicholson. “We aren"t winning," Trump reportedly said during a July Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan. "We are losing." Nicholson has been the top U.S. general in Afghanistan since March 2016 and has won accolades on Capitol Hill for his candor about the state of the war, which he first described as a stalemate in February. Last week, Mattis defended Nicholson, but would not say whether the president has confidence in the general. “Ask the president,” Mattis said. “I will tell you right now, he is our commander in the field, he has the confidence of NATO, he has the confidence of Afghanistan, he has the confidence of the United States,” Mattis said.

What about Pakistan?

The administration has stressed that its strategy will take a regional approach, including pressuring Pakistan to more aggressively combat terrorist safe havens within its borders. To do that, the administration could reduce aid or make it contingent on Pakistan’s efforts against terrorists. Mattis has already withheld $50 million in aid from Pakistan over what the Pentagon described as its insufficient actions against the Haqqani Network. Still, the Pentagon said that decision was unrelated to the overall strategy review for Afghanistan that was then ongoing. Other options to pressure Pakistan include taking away its status as a non-NATO ally and naming the country as a state sponsor of terrorism. Mattis on Sunday said Trump’s strategy would address Pakistan, but would not get into more details ahead of the president’s address. “It is a South Asia strategy,” Mattis said. “It is not just an Afghanistan strategy. So if you look at the region, it"s a South Asia strategy, and we"ll be addressing those issues in it.”

As we noted briefly earlier, the key highlights of the upcoming speech were leaked online courtesy of Fox News" Jennifer Griffin, and are as follows:

• The president has signed off on 4,000 more US troops to Afghanistan; not clear he will talk numbers tonight. No talk of withdrawal.


• In speech tonight Pres Trump will ask "region to do more,"  will ask "India and Pakistan to do more to bring Taliban to negotiating table.


• Trump strategy to include negotiating w/ Taliban. In past Qatar negotiations failed because Pres Obama announced troop withdrawals: US official

Of the items above, the aditional 4,000 troops are the most notable and confirm Ron Paul"s guess above - continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will "win" the war!

President Trump is due to speak at 9pmET from Fort Meyer, Va....

The Latest Attempt To Win The Afghan War: Replace The Soldiers With Mercenaries

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

One of the most controversial aspects of the Iraq war was the heavy use of defense contractors, who were in many cases paid vast sums of money to do jobs that you’d think an ordinary soldier could do. When it was all said and done, defense contractors had reaped $138 billion dollars by providing security, logistics, and construction services. Among the most notorious of these contractors was Blackwater, whose employees gained a reputation for reckless behavior that caused many unnecessary deaths.

Fast forward to today, and now Blackwater’s founder, former Navy Seal Erik Prince, is pushing for a plan to win the war in Afghanistan by replacing the soldiers with defense contractors. Prince first suggested the plan last May in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where he described this idea in colonial terms. The private military units would be based on units that were deployed by the British East India Company, and would be lead by a single person who he referred to as an “American Viceroy,” that would report directly to the president.

As strange as it may sound, Trump appears to be taking the idea seriously. It’s hard to blame him. Afghanistan is now America’s longest running war, and no matter how many soldiers, generals, aid, or money we throw at the country, nothing seems to bring stability. 

Which is why this radical new plan probably looks very enticing to Trump right now.

Under his proposal, private advisers would work directly with Afghanistan combat battalions throughout the country, and the air force would be used for medical evacuation, fire support and ferrying troops.

 

Prince said the contractors would be “adjuncts” of the Afghan military and would wear that nation’s military uniforms. Pilots would only drop ordnance with Afghan government approval, he said.

 

Currently, troops from a U.S.-led coalition are stationed primarily at top level headquarters and are not embedded with conventional combat units in the field. Under the plan the contractors would be embedded with Afghanistan’s more than 90 combat battalions throughout the country.

In addition the plan will supposedly cost $10 billion per year, which is a far cry from the $40 billion that is currently being spent. It would involve replacing much of the 8,400 troops who are currently stationed in Afghanistan with 5,500 contractors, and provide a privately owned air force of 90 planes that wouldn’t give fire support without the permission of the Afghan government.

However, there is one problem with this plan. There’s probably a good reason why our soldiers aren’t embedded with the Afghan army in such a decentralized fashion. It probably has to do with the fact that our soldiers are routinely killed by Taliban sympathizers masquerading as Afghan soldiers (many of whom are severely demoralized, poorly paid and equipped, and lead by corrupt officers). Without separating the contractors into heavily fortified compounds (as our military does right now), and by spreading them thin across a vast and desolate country, these contractors would be extremely vulnerable.

It’s certainly a unique plan that is at least different from what our military has been doing in Afghanistan since 2001, which has been more of the same, year after year. But it’s also fraught with danger and the potential for disaster. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about. When it comes to military operations led by advanced nations, disaster is always the safest bet. After all, they don’t call Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires” for nothing.

Perhaps instead of asking how we could win the war in Afghanistan, we should be asking ourselves how we can get out as fast as possible and cut our losses.

It’s been 16 years, and there’s no sign that the people in that country have any interest in becoming the kind of liberal democracy that we want them to be. And without that support, there is no military plan in the world that will ever give us a satisfying victory in Afghanistan.

Trump's Slide Into Endless-War Syndrome

Authored by Ivan Eland via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump touted his nationalist “America First” foreign policy, which implied that he wanted to stay out of foreign brushfire wars. Even before that, he tweeted his disapproval of American involvement of the Afghan War.

The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria

Yet now he has delegated the authority to his Secretary of Defense to send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan to join the almost 9,000 that remain there advising and assisting Afghan forces and hunting Islamist terrorists. And that is not the only instance in which the Trump administration has gone against his original inclination or is contemplating it.

Trump appears to be delegating the troop re-escalation decision for Afghanistan to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, because the president wants to be able to dodge responsibility in case that policy is ultimately unsuccessful, just as he blamed the botched Special Operations raid in Yemen on the military. Re-escalation is likely to fail, because the administration has no strategy for turning the already-lost conflict around. Adding 3,000 to 5,000 troops, according to a U.S. military that never wants to admit losing a war, would allow American troops to “advise” Afghan troops in battlefield areas, instead of remaining at higher headquarters, and also to call in U.S. air and artillery strikes in support of those local forces.

Yet the Afghan War is the longest conflict in American history, and no conception of “success” can be realistically imagined. How can an augmented force of 13,000 or 14,000 American advisers have success helping a still pathetic Afghan military (even after 16 years of U.S. training), when 100,000 much more potent U.S. combat troops could not defeat the Taliban during all those prior years of conflict?

And if the Taliban’s gains on the battlefield aren’t enough, the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has caused some Islamist militants to pledge allegiance to the even more radical and brutal ISIS group. One can easily see that when the 3,000 to 5,000 troops have little effect on the battlefield, which is the probable outcome, the military will begin demanding a more sizeable re-escalation of the endless conflict.

Should we give the U.S. military a blank check for perpetual war until it comes up with a face-saving way to exit with honor? Such a ruse didn’t fool anyone in the Vietnam War.

India’s Interests

The original U.S. enemy, Al Qaeda, is already a spent force in that part of the world. In addition, the Indian government is assisting Afghanistan economically and Afghan forces militarily and would have an incentive to do much more if the United States withdrew from the fight. India doesn’t want its arch rival Pakistan’s support of the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan to result in a Taliban-controlled or influenced Afghan government that will augment Pakistan’s power in the South Asian region. Thus, the United States could let India, which has greater strategic interest in this local war than does the United States these days, take over countering the Taliban and ISIS in the region.

Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots fly near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 5, 2017.  (Army photo by Capt. Brian Harris)

In addition to re-escalating an already unsuccessful Afghan War, some in the Trump administration want to ramp up the fight in Syria and assistance to the Saudi Arabian-led coalition against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are loosely aligned with Saudi-rival Iran.

Trump, seemingly only to prove he was tougher than President Obama was in Syria, mounted a for-show cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base after an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Before the U.S. attack, the Trump administration warned the Russians and the thus the Syrians that it was coming, thus severely mitigating its effect.

Lately, however, some in the Trump administration want to widen the war against ISIS in Syria to include Iranian-sponsored militias that are also fighting ISIS. Yet the perils of escalation in Syria became apparent when a Syrian government plane dropped bombs near U.S.-sponsored rebels, U.S. aircraft shot down the plane, and then the Russians declared that any American aircraft flying over Syrian government-controlled areas would be tracked as potential targets. Russian downing of an American aircraft or vice versa would be an unneeded and dangerous escalation between two nuclear-armed great powers over the outcome of a civil war in a country that is not strategic to the United States.

The desire of some Trump administration officials to go after Iranian-sponsored militias in Syria is part of a larger Trump inclination to support Saudi Arabia in its regional rivalry with Iran in the Persian Gulf. That regional rivalry is also playing out in the destitute country of Yemen, with the United States selling the despotic Saudis a fresh batch of expensive military equipment, some of which will probably be used to kill Houthis in Yemen, including lots of civilians. Yet if Syria is not strategic to the United States, the poor nation of Yemen is certainly not either.

In the Syrian civil war, the United States should sit back and watch its adversaries fight each other — ISIS and other radical Sunni Islamists versus Iran, Iranian-sponsored militias, the autocratic Syrian government, and Russia.

In the internecine conflict in Yemen, the Saudi coalition, which has already killed many civilians, is hardly better than Iran.

In the Afghan civil war, the United States should accept defeat, withdraw its forces — instead of re-escalating the war — and let India fully take over assisting the Afghan military in its fight against the Taliban and ISIS.

In sum, Trump should avoid getting co-opted by the U.S. military and honor his campaign rhetoric, which implied staying out of non-strategic brushfire wars.

Pentagon To Send 4,000 Troops To Afghanistan In Trump's Largest Deployment Yet

Two days after Trump ceded unilateral authority on Afghan troop deployments to the Department of Defense, the Pentagon wasted on time and according to AP, the Pentagon will send 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan to support existing forces and in hopes of breaking a stalemate in a war that has now been passed on to a third U.S. President. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.

According to AP, the decision by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could be announced as early as next week, and was prompted by "the rising threat posed by Islamic State extremists, evidenced in a rash of deadly attacks in the capital city of Kabul, has only fueled calls for a stronger U.S. presence, as have several recent American combat deaths." Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said, “No decisions have been made.”

Trump’s decision Tuesday to give Mattis authority to set force levels in Afghanistan mirrored similar powers he handed over earlier this year for U.S. fights in Iraq and Syria. The change was made public hours after Sen. John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Republican chairman, blasted Mattis for the administration’s failure to present an overarching strategy for Afghanistan. McCain said the U.S. is “not winning” in Afghanistan, and Mattis agreed.

The finality of the decision isn’t entirely clear. While Trump has handed over the troop level decision-making, there is nothing preventing him from taking it back.

Mattis has repeatedly stressed that increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would take place within a broader, long-term strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan. In congressional testimony this week, he said the strategy will take into account regional influences, such as Pakistan’s role as a Taliban sanctuary. Regional powers Iran, India and China, which all have political stakes in the fate of Afghanistan, also must be considered.

The bulk of the additional troops will train and advise Afghan forces, according to the administration official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss details of the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A smaller number would be assigned to counterterror operations against the Taliban and IS, the official said.

From the Afghan side, reactions were split: Daulat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan’s defense ministry was reluctant to comment on specifics Friday but said the Afghan government supports the U.S. decision to send more troops. “The United States knows we are in the fight against terrorism, ” he said. “We want to finish this war in Afghanistan with the help of the NATO alliance.”

However, another Afghan lawmaker, Nasrullah Sadeqizada, however, was skeptical about additional troops and cautioned that the troop surge should be coordinated with the Afghan government and should not be done unilaterally by the United States. “The security situation continues to deteriorate in Afghanistan and the foreign troops who are here are not making it better,” he said.

The gamble to send even more troops in Afghanistan is a big one for the president who inherited America’s longest conflict with no clear endpoint or a defined strategy for American success, though U.S. troop levels are far lower than they were under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. In 2009, Obama authorized a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, bringing the total there to more than 100,000, before drawing down over the rest of his presidency.

Trump, who barely spoke about Afghanistan as a candidate or president, concentrating instead on crushing the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, may be underestimating the potential risk he faces by sending more troops in harms way. His predecessors both had hoped to win the war. Bush scored a quick success, helping allied militant groups oust the Taliban shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, before seeing the gains slip away as America’s focus shifted to the Iraq war. In refocusing attention on Afghanistan, Obama eliminated much of the country’s al-Qaida network and authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, but failed to snuff out the Taliban’s rebellion.

Obama set a cap a year ago of 8,400 troops in Afghanistan after slowing the pace of what he hoped would be a U.S. withdrawal. Nevertheless, there are at least another 2,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan not included in the official count. These include forces that are technically considered temporary even if they’ve been in the war zone for months.

That said, Mattis’ deployment of more troops will be far smaller than Obama’s.  While the new troops could raise fears of mission creep, Mattis told lawmakers this week he didn’t envision returning to the force levels of 2010-11, when Obama thought he could pressure the Taliban into peace talks. Despite heavy losses, the Taliban fought on and in recent months appear to be gaining traction.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of news that awaits Trump: there have been almost 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and another was wounded in eastern Afghanistan this weekend in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

Time For The US To Take A Step Back From Afghanistan

Submitted by James Durso, originaly posted op-ed via The Hill,

Otto von Bismarck said, “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” America should apply the same reasoning to Afghanistan.

This month we learned the U.S. Marines are back in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province and the center of opium poppy production, and their mission may expand. President Trump will soon decide if he should send 8,400 more troops there for the latest chapter in America’s longest war. Should he?

I think not. We gave Afghanistan out best effort: over 2,200 dead soldiers, over 20,000 wounded, and over $700 billion for everything from ammunition to medical care for veterans. We need to face the fact that it’s an endemically violent place and may never change and another “whole of government” effort may not make any difference.

And don’t take my word for it: the Talban has rejected peace talks with the Afghan government as surrendering to the enemy and against Islam.

The Afghans have seen off every visitor and invader, from Alexander the Great to the U.S. Central Command, so why spend another dollar there? For example, the regional transport network has avoided Afghanistan and the enthusiasts for a New Silk Road or One Belt, One Road haven’t absorbed that the world is avoiding Afghanistan not out of stupidity but out of hard-won experience.

Yes, there is wealth to be had: Russian, British, and American geologists have found that Afghanistan has enormous untapped mineral resources, valued at $1 to $3 trillion. The minerals are in the ground, sure, but there’s no way to get them out so they’re effectively worth nothing. And there’s no way to get them out because the country is violent and corrupt which scares away prudent investors.

In 2008, the Chinese won the rights to the Aynak copper mine for $3 billion and an alleged $30 million bribe to the minister of mines. In 2017, no copper has yet been mined and the Chinese executive heading the project has been expelled from the Communist party for corruption. The only good news, if you can call it that, has been the recent Taliban green light for the restart of the project.

Wise Western investors should temporarily cede the field to the Chinese, Pakistanis, and Iranians — our enemies and frenemies — and let them try to make something of it. Afghanistan will still want friends in the West and we should exercise some of that recently derided “strategic patience” until the time is right and the Chinese have worn out their welcome when the Afghans realize they won’t create any jobs. Dealing with Afghanistan should be like buying a used car — let someone else take the loss and get it later at a savings. In this case, the savings of American lives and the bandwidth our leaders can devote to tractable issues.  

What should the U.S. do? 

• Ensure the Afghans who helped our military and diplomatic effort as translators or other helpers get visas to the U.S. Yes, that will cause a brain drain, but as it stands now, they’re not being given the chance — by their own government or the Taliban — to do what they’re capable of, so their talent is being wasted. It won’t be wasted in the U.S.

• Enact a soft cordon to protect the neighboring Central Asian states. They have less transparency than we like but have functioning governments and moderate, secular societies. The U.S. should increase military-to-military and cop-to-cop relationships with Central Asia, both for security sector reform and border security to stanch the flow of drugs. If the effort works, and the flow is diverted via Pakistan and Iran, it will increase addiction and public corruption and give the U.S. another lever to use when dealing with Tehran and Islamabad. Central Asia has a lot of human potential, mineral and energy resources, and is an East-West transport route. The transporters will lose a north-south route to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the Central Asian states can continue to trade to the Persian Gulf via Iran.

• Focus our effort on the narcotics trade and its twin, money laundering. Afghanistan has one successful export: poppy, which accounts for 90 percent of worldwide production of heroin, and the area under cultivation has increased in fits and starts since 2002. Destinations for drug proceeds and stolen government funds, like the United Arab Emirates, are more interested in being word-class business centers than hosting crash pads for narcos, so we can count on their continued cooperation and assistance. U.S. assistance to Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics effort, which will be centered in Helmand Province — the destination for all those Marines — can be refashioned to technical intelligence support to supplement HUMINT networks. 

We did our best in Afghanistan, but it’s time to move on.

US Releases Video Of "Mother Of All Bombs" Explosion Which Killed 36 ISIS Fighters

One day after the Trump administration demonstratively used the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB, also known as Mother Of All Bombs) the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal in Afghanistan, in a clear show of force meant to send a signal to North Korea, it released a video of the explosion.

.@USFOR_A releases GBU-43 #MOAB strike video against #ISIS-K cave complex, #Nangarhar, #Afghanistan #DefeatDaeshhttps://t.co/MuhU7JXuNn pic.twitter.com/qBqptpuzbE

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 14, 2017

Afghan officials said 36 militants were killed in the strike in Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border, where the US military previously estimated ISIS had 600 to 800 active fighters. There were no civilian casualties, according to the Ministry of Defense statement, which also said several ISIS caves and ammunition caches were destroyed. U.S. officials said precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties. The ISIS commander in the area was among the dead, Afghanistan’s presidential palace said.

Hakim Khan, 50, a resident of Achin district where the attack took place, was quoted by CBS as saying he welcomed the attack on ISIS, saying, “I want 100 times more bombings on this group.”

But fierce opposition among Afghans also surfaced. Former President Hamid Karzai condemned the strike, saying it “is not the war on terror but inhuman, and (the) most brutal misuse of our country as (a) testing ground for new and dangeorus weapons. It is upon us,Afghans, to stop the USA.”

Karzi said, “I vehemently and in strongest words condemn the dropping of the latest weapon.”

Others were similarly stunned by the unexpected US show of force.

Since news of the strike broke, most social media users in Afghanistan criticized both the Afghan government and U.S. One user calleld it “our generation’s “Hiroshima,” adding, “I’m still in shock.”

In a 2003 review of the legality of using the MOAB, the Pentagon concluded that it could not be called an indiscriminate killer under the Law of Armed Conflict. “Although the MOAB weapon leaves a large footprint, it is discriminate and requires a deliberate launching toward the target,” the review said, adding, “It is expected that the weapon will have a substantial psychological effect on those who witness its use.”

Meanwhile, President Trump called the attack a “very, very successful mission.” The U.S. military headquarters in Kabul said in a statement that the bomb was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time Thursday on a tunnel complex in Achin district of Nangarhar province, where the Afghan affiliate of ISIS has been operating. The target was close to the Pakistani border.

The U.S. estimates 600 to 800 IS fighters are present in Afghanistan, mostly in Nangarhar. The U.S. has concentrated heavily on combatting them while also supporting Afghan forces battling the Taliban. Just last week a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Maryland, was killed in action in Nangarhar.

According to CBS, Adam Stump, a Pentagon spokesman, said the bomb was dropped from a U.S. MC-130 special operations transport. He said the bomb had been brought to Afghanistan “some time ago” for potential use. Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a written statement that the strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations in the Achin area “while maximizing the destruction” of ISIS fighters and facilities. He said ISIS has been using improvised explosive devices, bunkers and tunnels to strengthen its defenses.

“This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K,” he added, using the U.S. military’s acronym for the ISIS affiliate.

Ismail Shinwari, the governor of Achin district, said the U.S. attack was carried out in a remote mountainous area with no civilian homes nearby. He said there has been heavy fighting in the area in recent weeks between Afghan forces and ISIS militants.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said ISIS fighters had used the tunnels and caves in Achin to maneuver freely. “The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and, in order to defeat the group, we must deny them operational space, which we did,” Spicer said.

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With that we now turn our attention to North Korea, where many expect that an explosion of a similar magnitude is imminent over the next 48 hours.