There are several reasons to applaud President Trump after he rolled out his new Afghanistan policy on Aug. 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s recommitment to the Resolute Support mission reflects the advice of his generals, and listening to them is wise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also appears to have rejected the idea of outsourcing the air war against the Taliban and other militants there to private contractors \u2014 a bad idea that had nevertheless recently gained some traction at the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s good to see that Trump was not compelled to offer a timeline for future drawdowns or withdrawals, which was a perennial flaw in former President Obama\u2019s handling of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Trump did not really offer much that was new in terms of strategy and tactics. He offered no details and no benchmarks for how he\u2019ll determine whether his new strategy is working. He would not even say how many additional troops he might send to Afghanistan or what they might be tasked to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was nothing new in Trump\u2019s promise to seek the \u201cintegration of all instruments of American power … toward a successful outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former Presidents Bush and Obama said the same thing five and 10 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putting pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban? The U.S. military has been talking about that for more than 10 years. It\u2019s proven to be very hard, and Trump offered no details on how his effort might be different this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump said \u201cmicromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s good common sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But most military leaders don\u2019t typically blame the lack of success in Afghanistan on micromanagement from Washington \u2014 they blame it on the intractable problems that exist on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s clear that the way ahead in Afghanistan has been a difficult decision for Trump. He\u2019s spent months deliberating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We all know that the president was deeply skeptical of the war effort there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, it was heartening to hear Trump\u2019s candor when he said: \u201cMy original instinct was to pull out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While it is wise not to abruptly pull out of Afghanistan \u2014 risking chaos and a repeat of what happened in Iraq with the rise of ISIS \u2014 it\u2019s still hard to see how Trump\u2019s plan for ending America\u2019s longest war is substantially different than the one Obama rolled out in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s still hard to see how Trump\u2019s plan for ending America\u2019s longest war is substantially different than the one Obama rolled out in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":76,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[76,18],"tags":[],"coauthors":[643],"class_list":["post-31786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"XUNBIPFZXVEZBF72IRXGIUI3A4","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/editorials\/2017\/08\/28\/editorial-will-trumps-afghanistan-strategy-actually-make-a-difference\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n