Einstein's over-quoted yet still-useful theory of insanity as a commitment to selfsame failures is, once again, being tragically verified. The NY Times:
[The Trump's administration's Green Zone] expansion is part of a huge public works project that over the next two years will reshape [Afghanistan's capital city] to bring nearly all Western embassies, major government ministries, and NATO and American military headquarters within the protected area. After 16 years of American presence in Kabul, it is a stark acknowledgment that even the city’s central districts have become too difficult to defend from Taliban bombings…. Along with an increase in troops to a reported 15,000, from around 11,000 at the moment, the Trump administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan is likely to keep the military in place well into the 2020s, even by the most conservative estimates.
But, continues the Times, "unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump has suggested that American forces would remain in Afghanistan until victory" — which, as our longest war's history of failure has shown, is undefinable and manifestly unachievable. For a president who campaigned on stalwart opposition to nation building and military interventions, Trump is nonetheless doubling down on the familiar insanity of both.
Which leads us to reflect on the second-longest war in America's history, whose 18-hour retelling by filmmaker Ken Burns debuts tonight on PBS. As George Will quotes the film's summation, the Vietnam war was "begun in good faith by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings," and "prolonged because it seemed easier to muddle through than admit that it had been caused by tragic decisions" throughout multiple presidencies. Next came the Iraq war — a one-presidency misunderstanding begun in ill faith — which foolishly ignored the past. Mr. Will also quotes a bemedaled Marine veteran of our Southeast Asian catastrophe.
If by Vietnam syndrome we mean the belief that the U.S. should never again engage in (a) military interventions in foreign civil wars without clear objectives and a clear exit strategy, (b) 'nation building' in countries about whose history and culture we are ignorant, and (c) sacrificing our children when our lives, way of life, or 'government of, by, and for the people' are not directly threatened, then we should never get over Vietnam syndrome. It’s not an illness; it’s a vaccination.
What separates — and is most worrisome about — Trump's Afghanistan-doubling down from previous presidents' ill-considered military expansions is that this president appears to be utterly untethered from war's decision-making. That, he leaves up to the generals. He does so because he hasn't a clue about the world, about history, about diplomacy, about "clear objectives" — and certainly not about a "clear exit strategy," the absence of which he conceals by saying virtually nothing to the American people about what in God's name he's doing in Afghanistan. Indeed, what are we still doing in Afghanistan? Of its "history and culture" we remain not only "ignorant," but helpless to turn around.
So just how does Trump get away with further obscuring his hypocritical war-making and nation building? That's simple. About something else, he merely tweets something outrageous — and thereby distracts a nation still engaged its longest war.