Trump’s Course-Correction on Afghanistan

Last night, President Trump announced a course-correction on Afghanistan.  It’s not the one he promised as a candidate, involving a withdrawal from that long-festering sore of an Islamic civil war.  Fortunately, neither is it the double-down option initially proposed by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to send fifty thousand more troops to Afghan battlefields.

Mr. Trump signaled instead we will go on the attack in Afghanistan and pressure Pakistan using a condition-based strategy, not arbitrary troop levels or artificial deadlines.

Interestingly, by not setting the numbers of additional U.S. military personnel he’d send to the region, the President has left the door open to yet another option – to be executed later, if not now: using a relatively small number of CIA agents and contractors to help Afghan forces destroy the Taliban and other jihadists.

We may yet wind up there, and should.