enhanced_deficit
10-24-2018, 09:02 PM
Trump’s Afghanistan strategy is going badly. But do voters even care?
by Travis J. Tritten
| October 24, 2018
The midterm elections are two weeks away and President Trump’s strategy for the country’s longest war is not going well.
In one of the most brazen attacks in recent memory, a U.S. brigadier general was shot and the top commander in Afghanistan targeted last week by a Taliban gunman, who was able to assassinate two top Afghan officials.
This week, a member of the Afghan security forces apparently turned on members of the U.S.-led coalition, killing one and wounding two others. All as the conflict, which costs taxpayers about $3 billion per month, entered its 18th year.
(https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trumps-afghanistan-strategy-is-going-badly-but-do-voters-even-care)
“Things are not improving,” said Bill Roggio, the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal. Roggio, who has studied the conflict for years, and his colleague Thomas Joscelyn, have now declared that the U.S. has lost the war in Afghanistan.
But as voters go to the polls for midterm elections that many believe will hinge on President Trump, the president’s year-old Afghanistan strategy is not only unlikely to affect the outcome but is largely nonexistent in the public debate.
“There is no question that it has fallen off the charts. Just look at news reports, you hardly ever hear about it,” said Fran Coombs, the managing editor of Rasmussen Reports, a polling company that tracks the midterm elections.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trumps-afghanistan-strategy-is-going-badly-but-do-voters-even-care
by Travis J. Tritten
| October 24, 2018
The midterm elections are two weeks away and President Trump’s strategy for the country’s longest war is not going well.
In one of the most brazen attacks in recent memory, a U.S. brigadier general was shot and the top commander in Afghanistan targeted last week by a Taliban gunman, who was able to assassinate two top Afghan officials.
This week, a member of the Afghan security forces apparently turned on members of the U.S.-led coalition, killing one and wounding two others. All as the conflict, which costs taxpayers about $3 billion per month, entered its 18th year.
(https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trumps-afghanistan-strategy-is-going-badly-but-do-voters-even-care)
“Things are not improving,” said Bill Roggio, the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal. Roggio, who has studied the conflict for years, and his colleague Thomas Joscelyn, have now declared that the U.S. has lost the war in Afghanistan.
But as voters go to the polls for midterm elections that many believe will hinge on President Trump, the president’s year-old Afghanistan strategy is not only unlikely to affect the outcome but is largely nonexistent in the public debate.
“There is no question that it has fallen off the charts. Just look at news reports, you hardly ever hear about it,” said Fran Coombs, the managing editor of Rasmussen Reports, a polling company that tracks the midterm elections.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trumps-afghanistan-strategy-is-going-badly-but-do-voters-even-care