WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rebuke of President Donald Trump, Arizona Sen. John McCain declared Thursday that “America is adrift in Afghanistan” as he unveiled a war strategy of his own that includes more U.S. combat forces and greater counterterrorism efforts.
McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. needs to put strict conditions on continued assistance to Afghanistan requiring Kabul to demonstrate “measurable progress” in curbing corruption, strengthening the rule of law, and improving the government’s financial transparency.
“Nearly seven months into President Trump’s administration, we’ve had no strategy at all as conditions on the ground have steadily worsened,” said McCain, a leading voice in Congress on national security matters. “The thousands of Americans putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan deserve better from their commander in chief.”
McCain said he’ll seek a vote on his “strategy for success” in Afghanistan when the Senate returns in September and takes up the annual defense policy bill. His plan doesn’t say how many more U.S. forces should be sent to Afghanistan.
Frustrated by his options, Trump has withheld approval of a long-delayed Afghanistan war strategy as he searches for a plan that will allow American forces to pull out once and for all.
The United States has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan, and Trump has so far resisted the Pentagon’s recommendations to send almost 4,000 more Americans to expand training of Afghan military forces and beef up U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida, a growing Islamic State affiliate and other extremist groups. But the troop deployment, which would augment an already existing U.S. force of at least 8,400 troops, has been held up amid broader strategy questions, including how to engage regional powers in an effort to stabilize the fractured nation.
These powers include U.S. friends and foes, from Pakistan and India to China, Russia and Iran. Pentagon plans aren’t calling for a radical departure from the limited approach endorsed by former President Barack Obama, and several officials have credited Trump with rightly asking tough questions, such as how the prescribed approach might lead to success.
But McCain has grown increasingly impatient. During a committee hearing in June, he told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that he had been confident the Trump administration would deliver a plan for Afghanistan within a month or two after taking office.
“So all I can tell you is that unless we get a strategy from you, you’re going to get a strategy from us,” McCain said at the time.
The amendment he plans to propose adding to the defense policy bill calls for a “long-term, open-ended” U.S.-Afghanistan partnership that includes an “enduring U.S. counterterrorism presence.”
He also recommends expanding U.S. training assistance to the Afghan security forces so they can capably fight the Taliban and other militant groups. And McCain proposes longer-term support that will allow the Afghans to develop and expand their own intelligence, logistics, special forces and air lift operations.
McCain’s approach envisions better harnessing U.S. military and civil strengths in order to “deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy” the ability of terrorist groups to use Afghanistan as a sanctuary and then seek a “negotiated peace process” that leads to Afghan political reconciliation.
He also wants to punish neighboring Pakistan with graduated diplomatic, military and economic costs “as long as it continues to provide support and sanctuary to terrorist and insurgent groups, including the Taliban and the Haqqani Network.”
GW Bush used the term “forces” for troops or soldiers. No one else has to do it. What McCain will do is what the USA has always done…a troop increase followed by troop deaths and then withdrawal. Troops, unlike “forces” bleed, they go blind, lose limbs or get burned over 75 % of their bodies. They get caught in horrible, hopeless situations in which death is imminent and all that’s left until it comes is thoughts about family, girl friends, wives and kids. They do it fighting for “the American way of life” in a place that has nothing in common with America other than the sun comes up in its East. They fight for “freedom” trapped in the armpit of the world pinned down under sniper fire. “making the world a better place” while their bodies itch from the sweat burns and they can’t stand the taste of their own sour breath and the grit on their tongues. The suffer an exhaustion that has to be experienced to know. Fatigued to collapse but high on adrenaline…can’t sleep…can’t stay awake. And the sadness…
What we are talking about is young men and women. Not “forces”. When a young American dies part of the American experience dies. When a 19 year old kid dies in some shit hole all that’s left is a flag for his mother. That mother never watches the kid graduate from college, get married or hand her a grandchild. All she has is that fucking flag and a picture on the mantle. America does not owe the world that. No part of it is worth that.
I’ve never been the same since I went through combat and it was 45 years ago. I remember the names and sometimes have to go into a bathroom so no one will see me cry. Why do we do this to our young people?
If that’s the case, could there be a better time to leave?
Our war in Afghanistan reminds me of a poem children do with their parents with fingerplay, when they’re really young:
The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.
That’s Afghanistan in a nutshell. You’re either in or your out. No halfway shit about it. I say we get out…McCain says we go all in. After 16 years, I can’t see us doing better than Alexander the Great. Do we really want to be a permanent occupying force there only to see it all go to shit anyway because we really don’t belong there? That’s really all we’re doing now with the remaining troops we have there, that are overseeing smaller and smaller areas of the country and basically just keeping the seat of gov’t alive in Kabul. We’re asking American patriots to fight to contain an idea, a warped ideology, and as horrible as that idea is, its one which has more than enough impetus to spread whether we’re there in country, or not. All those rebel fighters and terrorists still battling for their dying cause of an Islamic caliphate in that country have been degraded already, and we are never going to rid that country of all of them. It almost seems now like our being there gives them an excuse to keep their fight going against us as an occupying force. I have yet to see Saudi Arabia doing a fucking thing about this mess. It seems like wherever there’s Sunni terrorism, Saudi Arabia can be found playing both sides against the middle. That alone is total bullshit and crazymaking if we continue with this war. I want to see us leave Afghanistan. Enough is enough.
You tried your hardest to make a difference. You cared and still do. That’s what gives real meaning to life not what conservatives call being being successful or a winner. There aren’t any winners in war.
Please stop beating yourself up for decisions made for all the wrong reasons by corrupt leadership. All the survivors on both sides of that conflict deserve to achieve some peace. It can only come when you share your experiences with the rest of us and tell it the way it really was. I wish more vets would.
It can’t be easy to relive those memories. Peace to you
McCain isn’t concerned about Afghanistan. If he was he’d have demanded we leave after their first acts of treachery. He’s concerned with the decision to go there. It was a bad one but it’s tied to a Republican administration. When you start a war you have 3 options. Win it, lose it or fight it forever. McCain is for option 3 as it keeps his GOP club away from the scorn that comes with option 2. Soldiers lose their faces…the GOP keeps theirs.