Give him a teleprompter, and President Donald Trump comes across as dignified. He is substantive and he makes sense, as in resurrecting an exit strategy from a war that had all but been forgotten. It is called victory.
His predecessor would put up with no such notion and, in Afghanistan, launched new tactics while setting a date for our withdrawal. That meant the Taliban enemy could trot around killing as the itch occurred and waiting for the happy day. President Barack Obama finally gave up on that stupidity, tried out other plans and still saw the war drag on longer than any other in our history — 16 years at this point.
During his campaign and early in his presidency, Trump wanted to yank all the U.S. soldiers out and say good riddance to a seeming misadventure that has cost us some 2,500 American lives and a trillion dollars. Even with 100,000 troops there a few years back, compared to 8,500 today, we achieved little, he knew, and yet he listened. His generals made contrary arguments, and, as he said in a nationally televised speech Monday, the day of the solar eclipse, he changed his mind.
The points he made were good ones.
For one thing, we will be fighting a war, not trying the hopeless task of nation building, and we will be doing so in our own self-interest. Afghanistan is where al-Qaida plotted and organized the 9/11 assault. It now harbors some 20 different terrorist groups that would love nothing better than having all of us dead. To take off with the Taliban primed for more power would be to invite more plots and more assaults here and around the world.
