President Donald Trump laid out his strategy for a path to victory in Afghanistan, including a plan to increase U.S. troop presence in the nation. Democratic lawmakers weren’t buying it as a viable strategy, and immediately responded to Trump’s plan with condemnation and concern.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said:
“The President said he knew what he was getting into and had a plan to go forward. Clearly, he did not,”
She also added that Trump’s plan “is low on details but raises serious questions” about what we have to do to win, or even what “victory” would even look like.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also voiced his skepticism. Himself a former Marine, Gallego said:
“The American people should have heard a detailed, realistic strategy with achievable objectives and measurable benchmarks. Instead, we got only vague promises and wishful thinking.”
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, also laid into Trump for believing that his form of diplomacy would work, after the president recently bragged about the firing of hundreds of diplomats in Russia.
You can't announce a strategy that relies on complicated diplomacy with Pakistan/India/Afghanistan when you're firing all the diplomats.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 22, 2017
Democrats weren’t the only ones who voiced concern. Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather made it clear that the policy change in Afghanistan wasn’t realistically a deviation from anything we had already tried in the past.
Rather made it clear in a tweet he sent out early Tuesday morning that there was “no end in sight” for the war.
Bottom line conclusion on Pres. Trump's Afghanistan speech? We will continue to spend and bleed; no end in sight.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) August 22, 2017
Even far-right conservatives took the time to belittle the president’s Afghanistan strategy. On Breitbart, where recently fired White House strategist Steve Bannon now works, the site criticized Trump for leading us into “unlimited war.”
And conservative commentator Laura Ingraham also had issues with Trump’s strategy.
Who's going to pay for it? What is our measure of success? We didn't win with 100K troops. How will we win with 4,000 more? https://t.co/XHj9GpJzaZ
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 22, 2017
The decision to add around 4,000 troops and to simply tweak the strategy came after several months of deliberations within the White House, theWashington Post reports.
Yet the overall strategy hasn’t really changed, and those close to the president realize that the path they’re taking will take more time than they wish to see.
Trump campaigned in 2016 on an immediate withdrawal from the region. His announcement on Monday night is just the latest promise he has broken from his electoral campaign, which is probably why he is so deserving of the moniker “King of Flip-Flops.”
Feature image via YouTube screenshot.
