On Monday night, US President Donald Trump made a speech in which he outlined his long-awaited new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. As predicted by 21WIRE in July, Trump will undertake a fourth US ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, building up US troop levels in the country just like Bush and Obama did before him.
However, to say that he outlined a new strategy in his speech is being very kind to Trump. He did very little outlining and what he did present does not exactly qualify as new, or as a strategy.
One of the most notable features of his speech was his refusal to disclose troop numbers or timescales for their deployment. Granted, publicising those aspects of the US presence in Afghanistan did not create a win for Obama; the former president promised to pull out all the troops by 2014, but left office in January 2017 with over 8,500 US military personnel still stationed in the country. For Trump to keep such details from the American public, particularly the troop numbers, goes against basic democratic principles of transparency and accountability. As Finian Cunningham says:
‘America’s overseas wars are not just expanding under Trump; they are going secret and unaccountable.’
This post was published at 21st Century Wire on AUGUST 24, 2017.
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