John J. Waters
“What the f— are we doing here?” asked President Trump in the summer of 2017.
Nearly a year into his first term, Trump’s national security adviser had just proposed sending an additional 3,000 to 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, prompting his boss’s frustration that his Cabinet still hadn’t gotten the message. Trump had repeatedly conveyed that he wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, not prolong it.
Between 2012 and 2013, Trump tweeted about the loss of lives, waste of taxpayer dollars, and apparent absence of a strategy to get any value from our investment in the country.
“Afghanistan is a total disaster,” Trump said in 2012. “We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to everything else, robbing us blind."
“Rebuild the U.S. first. Our government is so pathetic that some of the billions being wasted in Afghanistan are ending up with terrorists.”
The $50 billion we poured into Afghanistan annually was having little effect on the country’s long-term security, and it fueled corruption at the highest levels of Afghan government and military. America committed time, troops, and money to a country and, somehow, got nothing in return beyond a vague sense that America was “safer” for having fought the war. For a dealmaker like Trump, these terms were worse than unfair, they were unconscionable—all benefits of the bargain went to them, none to us.
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