Afghanistan

Two days after Trump ceded unilateral authority on Afghan troop deployments to the Department of Defense, the Pentagon wasted on time and according to AP, the Pentagon will send 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan to support existing forces and in hopes of breaking a stalemate in a war that has now been passed on to a third U.S. President. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.

President Donald Trump has has given the Pentagon unilateral authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, the WSJ and Reuters reported overnight, clearing the way for the military to intensify its fight against the Taliban and opening the door for future troop increases requested by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. While no immediate decision had been made about the troop levels, which are now set at about 8,400, the Pentagon is currently weighing plans to send between 3,000 and 5,000 additional troops.

A massive Truck bomb shook the center of Kabul, killing at least 80 and injuring up to 400 civilians on Wednesday. Attacks against civilians have been on the rise in recent years, causing more than 11,400 deaths and injuries in 2016, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

You will find more statistics at Statista

As Statista's Dyfed Loesche notes, the figure has almost doubled compared to 2009.

Via TheAntiMedia.org,

Displaying what one commentator called “sheer 19th century bloodlust and thirst for empire,” Erik Prince, founder of the private mercenary firm Blackwater, argued in The Wall Street Journal this week that the United States should deploy an “East India Company approach” in Afghanistan.

Submitted by James Durso, originaly posted op-ed via The Hill,

Otto von Bismarck said, “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” America should apply the same reasoning to Afghanistan.

This month we learned the U.S. Marines are back in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province and the center of opium poppy production, and their mission may expand. President Trump will soon decide if he should send 8,400 more troops there for the latest chapter in America’s longest war. Should he?