Michael Barone: Trump’s Palmerstonian policy

Published August 24, 2017 4:01am ET



President Trump’s Afghanistan speech on Monday night was disciplined, measured, and sometimes verging on eloquence. It was presidential. Evidently, his vision wasn’t impaired when he looked at the eclipse without smoked glasses earlier in the day.

Like Barack Obama, Trump came to office determined to get out of Afghanistan. “My original instinct was to pull out,” he said Monday. But “decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk on the Oval Office.”

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