In the next few months, President Trump has a chance to enshrine his legacy and leave an “America First” imprint on American history. How?
It’s simple: by following through on his promise to end our “forever war” in Afghanistan. Recent reports make it clear the president is certainly eager to do so.
“President Trump intends to get as close as possible to his campaign promise to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing down troops in each country to just 2,500 by the end of his tenure,” Washington Examiner reporter Abraham Mahshie explains.
“The Pentagon has issued a ‘warning order’ to field commanders, according to CNN, alerting them to prepare for a quick drawdown order from the White House,” the report continues. “Currently, Afghanistan has 4,500 troops, and Iraq has some 3,000 troops.”
This is good news, but the president should take it a step further and pull all troops out of Afghanistan (except the necessary amount required to maintain an embassy).
For context, the United States first intervened in Afghanistan in 2001 to disable al Qaeda and push the Taliban out of power following the Sept. 11 attacks. However, the military largely achieved this goal in the first few years of the conflict. The nearly two decades of military intervention since have basically been a failed exercise in nation-building, with U.S. forces trying but failing to prop up an Afghan government as an alternative to the Taliban.
This conflict has been estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion, with tens of billions being directly lost to fraud, waste, and abuse. Despite all this investment, analysts predict the Afghan forces would collapse in “one day” without American backing.
The human toll of the war is incalculable. To start, remember the thousands of American soldiers who have lost their lives in the conflict. Tragically, Afghanistan veteran and Concerned Veterans for America Executive Director Nate Anderson told me in a Washington Examiner interview that it’s “increasingly hard to say” that our lost veterans “died for something that is in U.S. interests.”
Still, critics who oppose U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan offer a few different rebuttals that are worth taking seriously.
For one, they say that a U.S. exit could create a “power vacuum” for a terrorist threat to rise again. This, while hardly impossible, isn’t a good reason to keep troops involved. Terrorism could pop up anyway. The U.S. military can’t simply occupy every country under the sun in case terrorism wells up, especially because troops continue to lose their lives amid ongoing involvement.
Moreover, in the digital age of lone-wolf attacks, the importance of a physical haven is vastly overstated by critics. Terrorist attacks can and have occurred having been driven by terrorists’ digital communication with domestic actors, with no physical planning location needed of any kind.
Even if it did take back full control upon our exit, the Taliban has a strong incentive not to allow another attack on U.S. soil to be planned from inside Afghanistan, considering the military invaded in response last time around.
The other argument critics make is that if Trump orders a withdrawal now, before a peace deal is struck and Afghanistan is restored to stability, our soldiers will have died in vain. This is a blatant example of the “sunk cost” fallacy. Their “solution” is losing more soldiers in vain in pursuit of a goal we’ll likely never achieve.
Trump has known since day one of his presidency that an end to this conflict is long overdue. But, perhaps due to political pressures or poor advice from officials such as John Bolton, he has not followed through on his strong instincts.
That’s all behind him now. If Trump follows through and brings our troops home from Afghanistan, his “America First” legacy will be remembered as one of the highlights of his presidency.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a Washington Examiner contributor and host of the Breaking Boundaries podcast.
