There is no strategy, except that the war not be lost on Trump’s watch. If you were awake during the presidential campaign, you’ll recall that the President said he had a secret plan for winning this war, much better than anything the generals had. He lied.
Trump simultaneously excoriated President Obama on the entirely predictable results of his withdrawal strategy, and then promised his adoring adherents that he would do the same to end the war. They saw no contradiction there. President Trump has now said he’ll be increasing troop levels, though he hasn’t specified exactly how many, or what they’ll do, or who will help us, or how this will end, except with “winning.”
“Winning” in the zero-sum GOP mindset requires losers. The losers in this case will be the American taxpayers, all of them, not just the military, and their families, who wait, fearing every ring of the phone will bring news that their family member was injured or killed in this futile, unwinnable war. I know that feeling from the gut: my son—unlike anyone in Trump’s family, apparently ever—did two tours as a Marine combat infantryman in Fallujah, Iraq.
I have come to the opinion that no matter how able and willing, this particular war isn't any more winnable by the military than was Vietnam.
However, the Donald will do and say ANYTHING to avoid a loss on his watch, and needs desperately to distract us from the Russian investigation, which is now drilling down to his flaccid family, felonious, and possibly treasonous, family.
I doubt Trump read the part of the briefing materials--since his name wasn't featured in the paragraphs--where the military explained that Pakistan's government--a government whose leader, as frighteningly as ours has access to nuclear weapons--is not out friend, merely a temporary ally of convenience, currently bought and paid for with arms sales and "aid."
Al Quada and Osama bin Laden operated openly for years with impunity out of Pakistan, and Osama bin Laden lived quite openly in Abbottabad, Pakistan at the time of his death. For those of you who weren't paying attention, Abbottabad is both a city and a district, quite close to the Indian border, with a high proportion of military retirees living nearby. Abbottabad is said to be lovely (bin Laden clearly also thought it was safe) , with a pleasant climate, is a big tourist destination. It is the home of the the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul.
The Pakistan military, ostensibly our allies, and sucking from the American taxpayers' trough for billions in aid and war material, knew bin Laden was there, as did the Pakistan government.
These are the creatures our extremely ill-informed President imagines are going to help him out. Interestingly, for all the President’s open bigotry and disdain, the Paks are also Muslims. I wonder whether he’ll be offering them food from the White House Mess basted with pig’s blood. I am quite certain that the Pakistan military knows all about the President’s bigotry, and this obvious action in which he plans to USE them, while disparaging and reviling them, hasn’t passed unnoticed.
Pakistan wants the swag, so it will play along for a while, maybe, because their military will see this as yet another way to transfer wealth from you and me to them, and if the world gets really unlucky, might decide to loose a small nuclear weapon or two, most likely in the general direction of India rather than on their co-religionists in ISIL.
Things also look different when you have to make the decision and take the consequences, don’t they? Or, more likely, things look different when you need a unicorn to distract the public from your felonious deeds, from your thieving, and from your adherence to the ideals of White Supremacy.
From what I’ve read, nothing has changed in recent months on the ground in Afghanistan to warrant this hurry up, and extremely vague “briefing” from the Commander in Chief, except that he needs a shiny new unicorn to distract the press and the public from his cozying up to, glorifying, and providing social acceptance to Nazis and white supremacists. He did that to provide a distracting unicorn from the ongoing Muller investigations. God alone knows what he’ll do once the bad reviews roll in—Breitbart has already taken the “generals” apart apart—on this. Perhaps he’ll do humanity a favor and resign.
Sometimes fiction expresses things far more clearly than journalism, so I give you this, from Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October": This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.”