Authored by Daniel McAdams via The Mises Institute,
Like me, many of you watched President Trump's train wreck of a speech on Afghanistan earlier tonight. It's nearly midnight and I am still reeling.
I guess it was too much to ask to hear him admit the obvious and draw the obvious conclusions:
After 16 years - the longest war in US history - no one even remembers what we are fighting for in Afghanistan.
The war is over.
In a widely anticipated national address, President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he will not pull out U.S. troops from Afghanistan, saying he’s committed to a new strategy aimed at winning the nation’s longest war, now in its 17th year. Admitting that his "original instinct was to pull out" of Afghanistan - which in retrospect had been a mistake - Trump said he’s arrived at three "fundamental conclusions" about America’s core interests in Afghanistan:
As we detailed last night, President Trump will unveil his long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan tonight. Will he, as Ron Paul suggests, do the sensible thing and end the failed longest war in history? Or will he continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will "win" the war? Does America even know what "winning" looks like in Afghanistan?
Here's Ron Paul's preview (which may be a post-mortem)...
With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump's inner circle to halt the simmering push for war in Aghanistan, North Korea, the Middle East and virtually everywhere else courtesy of Generals Kelly and McMaster, this morning Reuters reported, quoting Defense Secretary Mattis that Trump has a made a decision on the United States' strategy for Afghanistan after a "sufficiently rigorous" review process.
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Any time we hear the term "privatize" coming from the usual suspects in Washington, DC we should immediately be suspicious. When this word is used, there's usually precious little actual privatization going on.
Thus, we should regard the Trump administration's proposed plan to "privatize" the war in Afghanistan with extreme amounts of skepticism.
USAToday reports: