America’s longest war
America’s longest war isn’t ending anytime soon.
That was the message of President Trump’s speech about his war-expansion plan for Afghanistan on Monday night. True to form, Trump offered few policy specifics. (Congressional officials have said the administration is adding 4,000 soldiers to the 8,500 U.S. service members serving there.)
Instead, Trump used the occasion as an opportunity to underscore his emerging doctrine on world affairs: an emphasis on American security, a de-emphasis on democracy promotion.
“We are not nationbuilding again,” Trump said. “We are killing terrorists.”
We certainly have done a great deal of nation-building, and much of it’s been wasted.
Since we invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, U.S. agencies have spent more than $714 billion on war and reconstruction there. Insurgents have specifically targeted U.S.-funded projects, but a tremendous amount of that money has been siphoned off into disastrous projects, corruption, and graft.
U.S. agencies have wasted billions of dollars on everything from unused schools to a notably unsuccessful attempt to stamp out Afghanistan’s heroin poppy trade.
Against this backdrop, Trump needed to provide the country with the sense of what victory — or even a dignified retreat — could look like in Afghanistan. Trump labeled victory as
“Attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.”
That’s a laundry list, not a definition of victory. It’s also not a list that can be in any way contained to Afghanistan.
The great danger of Trump’s new strategy based on what he called “conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables,” is that without a sense of what an end to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan looks like, “conditions on the ground” could proceed indefinitely.
There’s every reason to believe that further loss of U.S. troops and taxpayer money could proceed indefinitely as well.
Congress, which is supposed to declare wars, has been passive on the Afghanistan mission for years. It needs to resume its duty as watchdog and insist on answers to some simple questions about what our objectives in Afghanistan should be, and how much U.S. taxpayers are willing to spend to achieve them.