President Trump announced an extended military commitment in Afghanistan in his speech last night. He said it went against his first instincts.My original instinct was to pull out and historically I like following my instincts. But, all my life I've heard it decisions are different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. Reporter: The president gave no timeline on how much longer the U.S. will be in Afghanistan and number number of the additional troops. He did say America is no longer interested in nationbuilding, Representative but rather killing terrorists. He left the door open to possible negotiations with the Taliban. Joining me is journalist Tony Perry -- he has reported from Afghanistan while being embedded with Pendleton rings. 20, welcome to the program.What kind of change and -- change in strategy did you hear last night?I think we can call this the Obama strategy 2.0. None of this is new or revolutionary. They are tweaking it around the edges. We are talking -- he didn't use these figures that at the lake figures have been linked to -- 4000 more -- probably several thousand more NATO. We have done this before. What they are talking about is trying to get the Afghan Air Force ready. More tutelage in support for the Afghan special forces. Trying to get the specialists in counterinsurgency training out of the big bases and get them out with the Afghans in the villages sharing their deprivation and sharing the dangers and maybe going into combat situations., This is new. There's not much new under the sun when it comes to fighting and winning a war.Let me talk to you about this nationbuilding thing. The military has never totally embraced that concept. In order to actually make Afghanistan more stable and not a place where terrorists gather in order to plan attacks on the United States and other parts of the world, don't you have two be involved in building a nation up so it can resist that kind of infiltration?Yes, precisely. Just yesterday General betray us -- betray us -- Petraeus said -- it is a ungoverned territory like it was a 9/11. If that is our decision, think about Korea -- we have been there 70 years after the armistice.Getting back to the practical idea of expanding our presence in Afghanistan, is there a way for us to know at this point if anyone stationed in San Diego will be deployed.?Not at this moment but I think we will see the secretary of defense, General Mattis, called to testify in front of the Senate -- you can count on that and he will be grilled about this. So far, we have not seen a lot of Marines from Camp Pendleton sent.Marines from Camp Lejeune have been sent to Helmand province where the Marines were for a number of years before they were ordered out -- and once they were ordered out the resurgent Taliban took Helmand back over. They sent Marines back again to help the Afghan forces in their fight.There was a mention of loosening the rules of engagement let soldiers and down terrorists easily. Are there a lot of restrictions in place as to what the troops can do?There are a lot. The troops will grouse that they have to have a lawyer with them to see if they can do this or that. That is true of airpower, by the way. I was on a carrier in the Indian Ocean sending strikes into Afghanistan. They would call back -- we went to hit this target -- can we? Suddenly the lawyer was there. The head general in World War II was a man named Alexander Vandergrift. He was at Guadalcanal and he be -- he wrote his memoirs. He said well most generals wanted to go big and when the big war and be victorious -- tooth of the matter is, often with the general is assigned to do is make sure things don't get worse than they already are. I think that is what we have here.The Taliban is resurgent. They are taking over territory. Helmand, for example. The Marines fought and died for this. We are not winning. Madison said we are not winning. The general over there said it's a stalemate. Stalemate or not winning is not good. That's what this no program is -- to see if we can stabilize it. To see if we can get the Afghan forces to carry more of the load successfully. Also, let's try to get the Taliban out -- the folks trying to topple the Afghan government -- let's see if we can get them to the negotiating table. That will be tough.I was speaking with Tony Perry from the LA Times -- thank you.
Five years ago, before he was a candidate for president, Donald Trump was pretty sure he knew what to do about Afghanistan. It was a losing proposition, "a complete waste" in terms of "blood and treasure."
"Why are we continuing to train these Afghanis who then shoot our soldiers in the back?" he asked on Twitter in 2012. "Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home!"
More recently, candidate Trump was less certain about exactly when the U.S. should exit the struggle that he had railed against continuing.
And by Monday night, addressing the nation as commander in chief, President Trump had a different view. His first instinct had been to pull out, he said. But now, he understood how different things looked when you "sit behind that big desk in the Oval Office."
And why? Because, he explained, now he knew he had to deal with consequences. And that meant we would be staying in Afghanistan.
How long? There would be no more timetables or dates on calendars, he said.
With how many troops? He wasn't saying. Too much information of that sort had been given away in the past, he said.
(U.S. officials tell NPR the short-range surge is now planned at about 4,000 troops, increasing the current deployment by about half).
So how would we know when we were winning, or had won? Or that it was time to leave? That would be based on conditions, the president said. We would base our assessment on concrete improvements in conditions. There would need to be programs and progress on reforms; we were not giving anyone "a blank check."
And we will not "use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands or try to rebuild other countries in our own image" — a reference to the so-called "nation building" efforts of previous administrations.
A deliberate decision
It was a strong performance of a carefully crafted and even eloquent speech. Trump strove as he rarely has to personify presidential deliberation and the careful weighing of concerns. He wanted the nation to know he had thought about this.
Indeed, for several months, Trump has been frustrated with the state of the mission in Afghanistan, where "we are not winning." He has toyed with relieving the commander in the field and fumed at the fecklessness of supposed allies in the region. He has again threatened withdrawal.
Earlier in the summer, he tried to grant Defense Secretary James Mattis the authority to raise the troop level if Mattis wanted. But the secretary said no, he would not send more troops until there was a commitment to a strategy from the top.
Then, at a special briefing at Camp David on Aug. 18, national security adviser H.R. McMaster gave his boss three options. One was to withdraw, a second to escalate and expand the conflict aggressively. The third was a middle ground, sending more troops to do more training and assisting, more strengthening of the Afghani forces, but under a broad set of restated goals.
"How long have we been in Korea?"
Though less dramatic, the third option also seemed less likely to court disaster — at least in the near term.
Trump would refer to the restated goals on Monday night as a new "principled realism" that was built on several "pillars." These included forsaking any timetables or telegraphing of our plans or tactics. Instead, Trump said, the U.S. would target certain changes in conditions, although these were not specified.
They also included a new resolve to "confront Pakistan" over its ambivalence toward the Islamic extremists while also partnering with India. There was also a renewed vow to empower commanders in the field to fight and win with all the weapons and tools for "front line soldiers acting in real time to defeat the enemy."
It was apparent that the president's preference for boldness was not quite satisfied with this. But the consequences of either withdrawal or escalation were, as the president described them Monday night, unacceptable.
Without the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, Trump argued, al-Qaida and ISIS and the Taliban and other Islamic militants would use that country to stage attacks on the West — specifically the U.S. — as happened prior to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
It served to remind everyone of how long we have been in Afghanistan. The president called it America's longest war, but explicitly rejected the idea of an endpoint. When NPR's Tom Bowman asked one Pentagon official on Monday how long this recommitment to Afghanistan might last, the official asked, "How long have we been in Korea?" (Answer: since 1950.)
Addressing distress and disunity
There were other undertones to the president's address, which began with a paean to the "brothers and sisters" in uniform, the "special class of heroes" who embody, he said, the unity of purpose that makes America great.
He was speaking to a hall full of soldiers at Fort Myer, an Army base just a few miles from the White House across the Potomac River into Virginia. But he was also addressing the distress and disunity that followed recent violence in Charlottesville, not too far to the south in the same state.
"The soldier understands what we as a nation too often forget," the president said. "A wound on one is a wound on all, and when one citizen suffers we all suffer."
With those sentiments the president sought to soften the tone and effects of his own public appearances and utterances over the past 10 days.
It was an appropriate choice, before the right audience. Because the president was making his first appearance in the role of a commander in chief who was about to commit fresh U.S. forces to combat overseas.
His admonition was one the assembled men and women in uniform had heard before, a call to duty and an appeal to honor. They will surely respond as he knows they will.
But they also know the president was admitting that after 16 years in a confusing struggle in Afghanistan, the U.S. can neither declare victory nor disengage. So the president calls for more troops, more time, more sacrifice — with no way of knowing how much might be enough.
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