Washington, Pentagon. With Donald Trump’s domestic agenda in the toilet completely, he is forced to look for diversions and the US military is happy to help out, as American military leaders are pushing Trump to reinvade Afghanistan with US troops.
The Trump administration considers sending more occupation troops to Afghanistan, as the 16-year war grinds on in bloody stalemate, with no shortage of American kids coming home in flag covered coffins.
American led Afghan soldiers are suffering what Pentagon auditors call “shockingly high” battlefield casualties, and prospects are narrowing for a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. “The situation is deteriorating,” said a George Washington University professor.
President Donald Trump will receive a proposed new approach to the war within a week, according to Pentagon policy officials. The interest is to move beyond the stalemate and occupy the country more efficently, while destroying resistance freedom fighters, now building a coalition against US-NATO led efforts.
Trump had called for and end to the US occupation of Afghanistan in campaign 2016, but now he is following neocon policy in the footprints of President Barack Obama’s strategy — supporting Afghan forces rather than doing the fighting for them and seeking a political settlement with the Taliban — are likely to remain in place, defense officials said.
Special Operations Command, said the new strategy will include more US troops and changes in what the military calls “rules of engagement,” laying out when force can be used. The US combat role supposedly officially ended in December 2014. But now will be cranked up again with a flood of American soldiers and equiptment.
Trump is considering a request for roughly 3,000 more troops, as the US commander in Afghanistan has demanded, mainly for training and advising. The larger question is what they would do and how they’d fit into a broader strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.
The Americans say they have 8,400 troops in Afghanistan, one-quarter of which are for the counterterrorism mission. They don’t expect to be in combat, but then the same thing was announced in every US conflict post WWII and not one has ever ended in anything but loss of life, money and pain for humans caught in the path of Americans fighting foreign wars for corporate gain.
The war is now in its third US presidency and American taxpayers have committed $66 billion to equipping and supporting Afghan security forces. Afghans continue to flounder and many say this is a bridge too far for America, as no foreign power has ever truly taken Afghanistan, in the end Afghanistan always swallows its would be captors.