There have been zero terrorist attacks in the United States so far this year, but Afghanistan is in chaos. A few days ago, an ambulance packed with explosives exploded in the capital city of Kabul, killing almost one hundred people. Then, terrorists took control of the Hotel Intercontinental for over half a day, and went room to room killing all the foreigners they could find.
Homeland Security zealots in the USA like to pretend that we’re under a state of seige, but no, we’re not. Look at Afghanistan to see what a country suffering from terrorism is really like.
We’re going on 17 years of American occupation of Afghanistan, 17 years of war between Afghans and Americans. It’s the longest war in American history, and under Donald Trump, it’s going even worse than it was before.
When he was running for President, Donald Trump couldn’t come up with a coherent Afghanistan policy. He wrote, ”When will our leaders get tough and smart. We are being led to slaughter!” But he also claimed, ”I’ve never said we made a mistake going into Afghanistan,” even though he had actually said, ”We made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place.”
Once he became President, Trump promised that he would beat back the Taliban, and ”expand authority for American armed forces to target the terrorist and criminal networks that sow violence and chaos throughout Afghanistan. These killers need to know they have nowhere to hide; that no place is beyond the reach of American might and Americans arms. Retribution will be fast and powerful.” In August, Trump promised a win in Afghanistan, saying thay, ”We will fight to win… preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan… We will ensure that your service and that your families will bring about the defeat of our enemies and the arrival of peace. We will push onward to victory with power in our hearts, courage in our souls, and everlasting pride in each and every one of you.” Unlike the losers of the past, Trump said, he would win in Afghanistan.
This week, we got some news about how Donald Trump’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan has actually been going: It’s a mess. Donald Trump is losing ground, not providing the victory he promised. The Trump Administration was forced to admit that, since Trump became President and increased the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, the amount of territory controlled by the Taliban has increased by 40%.
Instead of focusing on fixing what’s going wrong in Afghanistan, Trump is working to conceal the problem from the American people. For the last three months, the Trump Administration has been withholding basic information on its activities in the war in Afghanistan, keeping the number of Afghan troops that have died and the number of the Afghan forces that have received training a secret from us.
It’s pretty clear what Donald Trump is trying to cover up. Despite his boasting about being a winner, his incoherence is leading the war even deeper into failure.