Trump Settles on Afghan Strategy Expected to Raise Troop Levels

August 22, 2017 by admin
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American military commanders have argued during the monthslong policy assessment that the additional troops would enable the United States to reverse gains made by the Taliban and militant groups like the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, the Islamic State in Khorasan.

Administration aides, under orders to let Mr. Trump announce the details, hinted that any American commitment to increase force levels would require steps by the Afghans, like doing more to fight corruption.

Mr. Trump’s Monday evening speech will be his first nationally televised prime-time address since he spoke before Congress in January and follows a week of controversy over his reaction to the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va.

When it comes to Afghanistan, Mr. Trump entered office as the skeptic in chief, and any ramped-up engagement there poses political risks for the president, who rallied voters weary of war with his sharp criticisms of American involvement in the country.

“We should have a speedy withdrawal. Why should we keep wasting our money — rebuild the U.S.!” Mr. Trump tweeted about Afghanistan in January 2013, as he considered running for office in 2016.

The Afghanistan question has been the source of a long-running debate at the White House. Stephen K. Bannon, who was recently removed as a top Trump adviser, fought the military’s recommendation for more troops and backed a number of alternative options — including using private contractors instead of United States forces.

The decision on troops is just one component of a military and political plan for the region that Mr. Trump and his aides have been discussing for months, and it is politically important for the president to differentiate his approach from the Obama-era policies he sharply criticized.

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Administration officials have been developing ways to try to pressure Pakistan to shut down the sanctuaries there for the Taliban, a goal Republican and Democrat administrations have pursued for years with little success.

A major concern is the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, which American intelligence agencies believe is responsible for some devastating attacks in and around Kabul. Funding for Pakistan, including contributions for Pakistani troops deployed near the border with Afghanistan, may be held up to more scrutiny than it is now, according to Pentagon and congressional officials.

Trump administration officials have also worked to lock in troop commitments from NATO and other Western nations, an important consideration for a president who has demanded that allies shoulder part of the burden.

Trump administration officials say they know they will need to reassure the American public that American military involvement in the nearly 16-year-old conflict will not be open-ended and will help combat international terrorism.

Moreover, many officials believe they need to do so without setting firm deadlines for reducing or withdrawing American troops, a practice President Obama embraced but which Trump officials assert denied the military needed flexibility and played into the hands of the United States’ adversaries.

One way to address that concern, administration officials have said in recent weeks, might be to stipulate that the Afghans would need to satisfy certain conditions, like fighting corruption or improving governance, to continue to receive American economic and military support.

A number of high-level participants in the review have important experience on these issues, especially Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and Maj. Gen. Ricky Waddell, the deputy national security adviser. Each headed an anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan.

Few people think that the war in Afghanistan can be ended anytime soon.

Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of the American-led international force in Afghanistan, told Congress in February that the United States and its NATO allies were facing a “stalemate.”

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According to a report to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, 57 percent of the districts in the country were under the Afghan government’s control as of November 2016, a 15 percent decrease from the previous year.

An estimated 8,400 American troops are stationed in Afghanistan, most assigned to an approximately 13,000-strong international force that is training and advising the Afghan military. About 2,000 American troops are tasked with carrying out counterterrorism missions along with Afghan forces against militant groups like the Islamic State’s affiliate.

Several hard-line lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had complained that Mr. Trump was delaying his decision as security in Afghanistan was eroding. Earlier this month, Senator McCain announced he had drafted an amendment outlining a new Afghan strategy because Mr. Trump had taken so long to act.

As recently as Monday, Mr. Mattis said that administration was weighing some radically different approaches, including withdrawing American forces and sending contractors to fight in Afghanistan rather than troops. The cost of deploying troops and contributions of allies were among the president’s questions.

“There were several options,” Mr. Mattis said. “The reason we had to get back together was he kept asking questions on all of them.”

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University of Texas takes down four Confederate statues overnight

August 22, 2017 by admin
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A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is removed early Monday morning from the University of Texas at Austin campus. (Eric Gay/AP)

The University of Texas removed four Confederate statues from its Austin campus early Monday morning, amid growing pressure to take down such monuments in the wake of racist violence in Charlottesville.

University president Gregory L. Fenves announced the decision late Sunday night, saying the “horrific displays of hatred” in Virginia had made it clear that Confederate statues had become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.” Demonstrations by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 turned deadly after a neo-Nazi plowed a car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring at least 19 other people.

Fenves said he had considered the historical and cultural significance of four Confederate statues on campus — depicting Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, John Reagan and former Texas governor James Stephen Hogg — but concluded they were “severely compromised by what they symbolize.”

“Erected during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation, the statues represent the subjugation of African Americans,” Fenves said in a statement. “That remains true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and bigotry.”

And so, under heavy security and surrounded by a few dozen supporters and protesters, crews began taking down the statues from the Main Mall of the campus after midnight Sunday, the Associated Press reported. Tensions were high, and police diffused at least one argument.

“I hate the erasure of history and my people’s history … people of European descent who built this country,” Mark Peterson, 22, who identified himself as a University of Houston student, told the Associated Press. “It burns me to my core.”

[Can you guess where these Confederate monuments were built?]

Mike Lowe, 37, who has advocated for Confederate statues in San Antonio to be taken down, disagreed.

“They have no other reasons than ‘you are erasing our history.’ Their reasoning is flawed,” Lowe said, according to the Associated Press. “These monuments represent white supremacy, and black lives haven’t mattered in this county the same as a white man’s matters.”

The statues of Lee, Johnston and Reagan will be reinstalled at UT’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, while the one of Hogg may be relocated to another campus site, Fenves said. Classes for the fall semester begin Aug. 30.

In 2015, the university also took down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and moved it to the Briscoe Center, two months after the fatal shooting of nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C. As The Washington Post’s Nick Anderson reported then, the statue had already been controversial, but the Charleston massacre provided a breaking point that led to its removal.

After the Charleston shooting, Fenves formed a task force to consider the fate of the campus’s Confederate statues. Fenves said Sunday he had consulted that same 2015 task force report when making a decision regarding the statues of Lee, Johnston, Reagan and Hogg.

“The University of Texas at Austin has a duty to preserve and study history. But our duty also compels us to acknowledge that those parts of our history that run counter to the university’s core values, the values of our state and the enduring values of our nation do not belong on pedestals in the heart of the Forty Acres,” Fenves said, using a nickname for the Austin campus. “We do not choose our history, but we choose what we honor and celebrate on our campus.”

[A car crash topples a Confederate statue and forces a southern town to confront its past]

Since Charlottesville, Confederate statues have become increasingly polarizing flash points between the left and the right, as well as the targets of graffiti and defacement. Some public leaders and university officials across the country have ramped up efforts to take such statues down — in a few cases removing them in the hopes of avoiding violent protests.

On Saturday, Duke University announced it would remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in front of the Duke chapel after the statue had been damaged by vandals.

Last week, four Confederate monuments in Baltimore were removed in the middle of the night. Similarly, the statue of Supreme Court justice and segregationist Roger B. Taney was taken down from the Maryland State House grounds after midnight on Friday, representing a change of heart by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

“We can’t wipe out all of our history, nor should we try to,” Hogan said then. “But when it reaches the point where some of these symbols, whether they have historical significance or not, when they become a focal point for racism and violence, then it’s time to do something about it.”

Even Six Flags Over Texas, a Dallas-area theme park, said last week it will no longer fly Confederate flags on its grounds, reversing an earlier decision.

“At Six Flags Over Texas we strive every single day to make people happy and to create a fun, thrilling and safe family friendly experience for our guests,” park spokeswoman Sharon Parker said in an email. “We always choose to focus on celebrating the things that unite us versus those that divide us. As such, we have changed the flag displays in our park to feature American flags.”

The flag for the Confederate States of America had been displayed at the park’s toll entrance and in the “Star Mall,” one of 10 themed areas within the park. The amusement park itself is named after the six flags that have flown over Texas over the course of history: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States and the Confederacy.

In wake of Charlottesville, Duke University removes Robert E. Lee statue after it was vandalized

A 121-year-old Confederate monument was coming down. This Kentucky town put it back up.