Afghanistan

There is surely no greater sign of the bankruptcy of American foreign policy than its Afghanistan policy. After 15 years of war and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, a new president entered the Oval Office poised to fundamentally change that policy. Within months he presented, with great fanfare, a continuation of the same. The result: The United States is now firmly locked into its forever war in Afghanistan.

Drawing upon two years’ worth of impertinent comments, offensive tweets and harmful policy positions, Donald Trump can aptly be described with a number of words that end in “-ist.” 

Protectionist. Nativist. Misogynist. Racist.

This is the summer of our discontent. As Americans celebrate July 4, they are mad at their leaders, mad at their government and mad at each other. A recent Pew poll finds that “public trust in government remains near historic lows.” Just 20 percent of Americans trust the government to “do the right thing just about always or most of the time.” The comparable figures were 40 percent in 2000 and almost 80 percent in the early 1960s. There has been a long-term loss of trust.

While we have been focused on the results of special elections, the ups and downs of the Russia investigation, and President Trump’s latest tweets, under the radar, a broad and consequential shift in American foreign policy appears to be underway. Put simply, the United States is stumbling its way into another decade of war in the greater Middle East. And this next decade of conflict might prove to be even more destabilizing than the last one.

Yes, that’s what the heated rhetoric coming from Washington about North Korea –and being responded to in no less bellicose tones by the Asian country – is: a nasty war of words. Rest assured that no bullets, no rockets, no mother of all bombs, not to mention atomic weapons are about to be fired, dropped or exchanged. Which, of course, is great.

The first time I met Gen. David Petraeus, he said something that surprised me. It was the early days of the Iraq War and, while things were not going well, he had directed his region in the north skillfully and effectively. I asked him whether he wished he had more troops. Petraeus was too politically savvy to criticize the Donald Rumsfeld “light footprint” strategy, so he deflected the question, answering it a different way. “I wish we had more Foreign Service officers, aid professionals and other kinds of non-military specialists,” he said.