A few quick thoughts on Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump. 

As you probably know President Donald Trump is expected to give a major speech on Afghanistan tomorrow night. Afghanistan is, quite frankly, a mess. Afghanistan's government has been taking unsustainable casualties against both the Taliban and ISIS. They have lost wide swaths of territory to both organizations and have suffered several major terrorist attacks. In short, they are essentially losing the war. 

Given how bad things are in Afghanistan you would have thought we would have heard more about the issue in the election season and the first few months of Trump's presidency. But we have not. I hardly remember Afghanistan coming up in the election at all, except for Bernie Sanders completely flubbing an answer on the war. The media briefly paid attention when Trump dropped the MOAB on ISIS, but after that they went right back to ignoring it. The issue just hasn't come up, even when there were major terror attacks there.

Trump is expected to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan. Some people might be a bit disappointed that we are rejoining a war that Barack Obama said we were done with, but I would say that we never really left. And, again, we can't really feel betrayed by Trump's strategy here if nobody ever seemed to ask him what his policy actually was. 

I don't think there are any other options, at least none that would have been acceptable. There were other solutions floated but none of them were good. The first was a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Though that would avoid further US troops deaths and avoid the sunk cost fallacy, it would be a disaster. Losing Afghanistan to the Taliban, or worse, ISIS, would completely invalidate the sacrifice of all the troops that died there. 

Furthermore abandoning Afghanistan would essentially cause the government to fall back to the Taliban. They are a horrible terrorist group by themselves, but the real fear is that they would allow other terror groups to operate freely and with support. ISIS is probably out, given that they fight the Taliban as well, but there is a real chance that Afghanistan could resume it's role as a terrorist haven and training center. Al-Qaeda isn't dead and given a safe haven they could come back. 

And there is a real chance of ISIS taking over as well. Right now they control quite a bit of territory in Afghanistan and have a decent chance of taking more of the country if the government falls. And it's very possible that an influx of foreign fighters fleeing from Iraq and Syria could use the country as a backup base to regroup and rearm. That would not only undermine our goals in Afghanistan, it would allow our worst enemy to rise from the ashes. 

The other option besides deploying troops was to send in a mercenary army. How serious this proposal was I am not sure, but it seemed like the option was on the table. Using a bunch of military contractors to fight the Taliban and ISIS seems like it would cause huge problems. People tend to hate mercenaries, even when they do a professional and expert job, and there is no guarantee that they would do so. It would be a PR nightmare even if they managed to win. 

I also don't know if there is a contractor out there that can handle a problem as complex and serious as Afghanistan. This isn't the middle ages, we don't have huge mercenary armies just standing around waiting to fight. And even if we did, I don't think that it would be any cheaper that to actually use our own troops. 

That means that we really don't have any good options in Afghanistan. We can't just let them fall and using mercenaries is likely to cause more problems then to solve. That leaves sending in troops. Though the numbers don't seem to be all that many, it might just be enough to keep the Afghani government from falling. It's about the only choice that Trump has so it shouldn't be surprising that he is doing so...