On Monday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson opened his show with his thoughts on the new Afghanistan strategy President Donald Trump was set to make public at Fort Myer in Arlington, VA.
Trump is expected to announce the addition of more troops in Afghanistan. That according to Carlson begs the questions of what victory in Afghanistan would look like, how it bolsters U.S. interests and how it will improve the current strategy.
“Here’s a few obvious questions,” Carlson said. “First, what is our objective in Afghanistan? Victory, of course, but what does that mean? American troops have been there for 16 years in part because there’s no consensus on what winning is. If the measure is defeating the Taliban, how will we know if we’re beaten? If our goal is to create a stable democracy, how stable is stable enough? If we’d like to see a secular modernized economically prosperous Afghanistan, and that was the goal at one point, are we really certain that’s possible in the next 50 years if ever? Second, if we increase our presence in Afghanistan, what long-term U.S. interests are we pursuing by doing that? The original goal was to eliminate state-sponsored terrorist training camps. Those are long gone. Even if those camps came back, it’s not clear how relevant they would be.”
“Islamists now recruit on the Internet, and even an untrained extremist can kill dozens with a car,” he continued. “We learned that sad lesson recently. So, what is the point of this? If the goal is simply to keep Islamic extremism from our shores, why is a war in Afghanistan more effective than say a vigorously enforced travel ban? Third, how will this strategy improve what we’ve been doing in Afghanistan already? And how have what we done in Afghanistan for a decade-and-a-half — a policy that clearly hasn’t worked? How do we ensure Trump’s successor doesn’t have to give another speech like this in four or eight years from now? And finally, how much are we willing to pay to achieve these goals? We have already spent more than a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. More than 3,500 American servicemen and civilian contractors have died there. More troops will inevitably mean more deaths and billions more in money we don’t have. Is it worth it? If we send 5,000 troops to Afghanistan and that strategy fails, will we cut our losses and leave as the Soviets and the British did before us? Will we send another 5,000, 10,000, 50,000? What is Afghanistan worth to us? It might be worth thinking that through ahead of time.”
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