Trump wongly suggests Obama had a touchy-feely approach.<\/b>
\nListening to President Trump \u2019s speech Monday night on Afghanistan, it was pretty easy to figure out how his military advisors had convinced him to endorse what is essentially a continuation of the policy he inherited from Barack Obama: using U. S. troops to train and advise Afghan security forces and engage in counter-terrorism operations, while pressing Pakistan to stop providing a haven for the Taliban and other insurgents.
The key was to package a policy largely characterized by continuity as a dramatic departure from the approach followed by Obama. Thus Trump told the nation that U. S. strategy in Afghanistan and Asia \u201cwill change dramatically.\u201d
(Ironically, he failed to mention the most significant departure from Obama\u2019s legacy: Trump\u2019s approval of the Pentagon\u2019s request to dispatch a few thousand more U. S. military personnel to Afghanistan. That information was communicated to the press and Congress off-camera by administration officials.)
Trump\u2019s case for dramatic change rested principally on two supposed differences with Obama policy. The first, he said was \u201ca shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.\u201d He said the administration \u201cwill not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground \u2014 not arbitrary timetables \u2014 will guide our strategy from now on.\u201d
This is an exaggeration. It\u2019s true that Obama set deadlines for withdrawal of U. S. forces, at one point proposing to leave no more than 1,000 U. S. forces in Afghanistan at the end of his second term. But he developed second thoughts about those timetables, and left office with 8,400 troops still deployed in Afghanistan in a noncombat role.
As for Trump\u2019s claim that the administration \u201cwill not talk about numbers of troops, \u201d that\u2019s also misleading. Trump may not have mentioned the 4,000 reinforcements in his speech, but his aides have been plenty talkative about those numbers. There\u2019s a reason why John McCain and Lindsey Graham were so pleased with the outcome of Trump\u2019s policy review.
A more egregious exaggeration of the difference between the Obama and Trump approaches came in a passage in which Trump said that \u201cwe will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands, or try to rebuild other countries in our own image. Those days are now over.\u201d Elsewhere in the speech Trump said: \u201cWe are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.\u201d
The implication was that the touchy-feely Obama administration was sending U. S. troops to Afghanistan to do social work, while Trump will be asking them to fight. But it was the Republican George W. Bush, not Obama, who \u2014 overcoming his distaste for nation-building as a candidate in 2000 \u2014 couched the U. S. mission in Afghanistan in terms of democracy promotion.
In a 2004 address to Congress, Bush boasted that Afghanistan \u201chas a new constitution guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women. Businesses are opening. Healthcare centers are being established, and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school. With the help from the new Afghan army, our coalition is leading aggressive raids against the surviving members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free and proud and fighting terror, and America is honored to be their friend.\u201d
Compare that effusive description of nation-building to this comment by Obama in a 2011 speech: \u201cThe goal that we seek is achievable, and can be expressed simply: No safe haven from which Al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland or our allies. We won’t try to make Afghanistan a perfect place.\u201d In the same speech he said: \u201cAmerica, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.\u201d
Four years later, according to the New York Times, Obama had a message for a meeting of the National Security Council convened to discuss Afghanistan. \u201cWe\u2019 re no longer in nation-building mode, \u201d Obama said. But he added that \u201cthe counter-terrorism challenges are real.\u201d
Or, as Trump would say more pithily on Monday, \u201cwe are killing terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

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