Zap, You’re Dead!

In recent years, there have been around 1,000 police shootings per year that have resulted in the death of the relevant suspect. We’ve seen riots, protests, criminal proceedings against cops (few ever get convicted) and political upheavals flowing out of public reaction to some of these fatalities and a strong push to retrain police officers to think and slow down before pulling that often-fatal trigger. While the U.S. Department of Justice had been pressing certain notorious police departments – even securing court-ordered restructuring – the Trump administration has pretty much reversed that practice under the “law and order” mantra that has gathered a rather nasty connotation among minority communities where most of these police killings occur. Clearly, government sanctioned racism is alive and well.

There has been an equal pressure to train police officers in the use of what is generally thought to be non-fatal alternatives to traditional bullets: rubber bullets, which can certainly kill or severely injure if they hit a particularly vulnerable part of the human anatomy, pepper spray and tear gas plus the increased use of Tasers to take down and control suspects. Tasers seem to be the preferred go-to non-lethal weapon of choice for close range, one-on-one, police/suspect confrontations. Over the past five years, Taser usage by police has risen by 50%. But how “non-lethal” are they in practice?

Alex Pasternak, writing for the August 22^nd FastCompany.com and citing a Reuters report, addressed this frequently overlooked question: “Tasers save lives, say police officials and Axon Enterprise, the company that makes them, citing independent studies showing that when deployed correctly—according to ‘guidelines’ Axon offers to police—Tasers reduce injuries among both officers and the people they subdue. Steve Tuttle, the company’s vice president for communications, said they are ‘the safest force option available to law enforcement.’

“But amid widespread concern about police use of force, there is no authoritative data about fatalities involving Tasers or any weapon used by police. The Taser is one of the most widely used: More than 90% of U.S. police agencies use them, and they have been deployed more than 3 million times in the field, says Axon.

“The company says that only 24 people have ever died from Tasers—18 from fatal injuries in falls caused by a Taser strike, and six from fires sparked by the weapon’s electricity. Not a single person, the manufacturer says, has died from the direct effects of the Taser’s powerful shock to the heart or body. Axon called the Reuters report misleading because most of the deaths also involved other use-of-force and because the autopsies had not been peer-reviewed, even though courts don’t require that standard…

“[Nevertheless,] Reuters has counted 1,005 incidents in the U.S. in which people died after police stunned them with the electrical weapons, most since the early 2000s. The Taser was ruled to be a cause or contributing factor in 153 of those deaths—far more than the 24 cases the company has counted.

“According to court records, police reports, and news stories from 1983, as well as reports by other organizations, Reuters found that

·         Nine in 10 of those who died were unarmed and one in four suffered from mental illness or neurological disorders, according to Reuters.

·         In nine of every 10 incidents reviewed, the deceased was unarmed.

·         More than 100 of the fatal encounters began with a 911 call for help during a medical emergency.

·         More than 400 incidents included court documents that had detailed accounts of the incidents, and a fourth of those showed that Tasers were the only form of police force.

·         In 193 out of a total of 442 wrongful death cases filed after the deaths, cities and their insurers paid a total of $172 million, but due to confidentiality, the actual value of awards in legal settlements is certainly higher than $172 million…

“The probability of dying from a Taser in a police encounter may be impossible to calculate, researchers say, given a lack of official data on their use, the fact that deaths often have more than one cause, and other complexities. Partly due to ethical constraints, little scientific research exists on how Tasers affect people in mental health crises, people under the influence of drugs, those with heart defects, and those who may be pregnant.

“Axon also keeps a record of deadly incidents involving Tasers, but the company doesn’t share that data. After learning of the Reuters investigation, Axon sent a memo to law enforcement groups summarizing some of the key points of the Reuters report, describing them as ‘not new’ and promising to provide ‘key resources’ to repudiate its findings.”

The American criminal justice system has a particularly bad reputation among developed nations. Not only are we the most incarceration-happy nation on earth – with only 5% of the earth’s population, we have a quarter of global incarcerated people – but beginning with the Reagan administration’s closure of legions of mental hospitals, releasing some pretty impaired people into the streets, we seem to have transferred those people needing medical mental help into jails and prisons ill-equipped to handle the caseload.

“[It] has been shown that about 20 percent of prison inmates have a serious mental illness, 30 to 60 percent have substance abuse problems and, when including broad-based mental illnesses, the percentages increase significantly. For example, 50 percent of males and 75 percent of female inmates in state prisons, and 75 percent of females and 63 percent of male inmates in jails, will experience a mental health problem requiring mental health services in any given year.

“It also appears that the individuals being incarcerated have more severe types of mental illness, including psychotic disorders and major mood disorders than in the past.  In fact, according to the American Psychiatric Association, on any given day, between 2.3 and 3.9 percent of inmates in state prisons are estimated to have schizophrenia or other psychotic disorder; between 13.1 and 18.6 percent have major depression; and between 2.1 and 4.3 percent suffer from bipolar disorder.

“Across the nation, individuals with severe mental illness are three times more likely to be in a jail or prison than in a mental health facility and 40 percent of individuals with a severe mental illness will have spent some time in their lives in either jail, prison, or community corrections. I think we can safely say there is no doubt that our jails and prisons have become America’s major mental health facilities, a purpose for which they were never intended.” Dean Aufderheide writing in HealthAffairs.org (4/1/14). Police often do not know what to do when confronted with the bizarre behavior of a mentally-ill suspect, and Tasers have become a very common tool in containing these individuals, with often horrible results.

“In a quarter of the 1,005 fatalities examined by Reuters, a quarter involved people suffering from mental illness. Amid cuts in government-funded mental health services, police encounters with those people have become more common: 1 in every 100 police calls involves a person with a mental health disorder, according to research by the American Psychiatric Association. Police experts worry that Tasers are used too often by officers when handling those encounters.” FastCompany.com

And once we incarcerate seriously-mentally-ill inmates, what happens? Stuff like this, earlier this year: “For 46 hours, Andrew Holland’s legs and arms were shackled to a chair in San Luis Obispo County Jail… The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was left in his own filth, eating and drinking almost nothing. He was naked, except for a helmet and mask covering his face and a blanket that slipped off his lap, exposing him to jail staff who passed by his glass-fronted cell.

“When he was finally unbound, guards dumped him to the floor of a nearby cell. Within 40 minutes, he had stopped breathing… Holland’s death Jan. 22 has provoked outrage in the Central Coast county, a record $5-million legal settlement, and questions about the way California jails handle a sharp increase in the number of mentally ill inmates…

“The surge in inmates requiring psychiatric care follows changes to California sentencing laws meant to reduce the state prison population, shifting offenders to county jails built to house those awaiting trial or serving short sentences rather than provide intensive, long-term care. At the same time, mental health experts say, an acute shortage of long-term care facilities makes it more likely that patients will experience a crisis that ends in their arrest, turning jails into the mental health centers of last resort.

“After nearly three decades of federal litigation to establish that psychiatric care in prison is a constitutional right, advocates for the mentally ill now find themselves starting over. Unlike the centralized state prison system, counties operate independently, and jail standards have few specific requirements. Mental health experts say most counties are ill-prepared for the challenge.

“From 2012 to 2016, jails in California reported a 30% jump — from 13,270 to 17,350 — in the number of inmates identified as needing mental health services, according to the California Board of State and Community Corrections.” Los Angeles Times, August 24^th. It’s the same story across the entire country. Zap, you’re dead.

In the end, this does come down to the moral imperatives – our value system – required by our society, the allocation of resources, a willingness to change and admit when we are wrong, and a rather significant push for attitude adjustment and retraining in most of this nation’s police forces. It is a question of priorities.

The message from the feds – given the above-noted reversal of DOJ priorities from true justice to a general blanket license to police departments under a “law and order” view of the world and a president who actually pardoned a former police chief who violated a federal court order aimed at that “equal justice” priority – pretty much tells you that we are going in the opposite direction. By most measures, from moral to hard-dollar costs to taxpayers, this negative trend is a very, very expensive choice. This most definitely does not make America safer – or “great” – again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what seems most lacking in this new retrograde trend is a combination of a lack of empathy with and even greater lack of common sense.

Icons of the Confederacy

After World War II, just about every monument, symbol and statue dedicated to Nazis and Fascists were torn down and destroyed. No one erected statues to honor even the greatest of German generals, including the “Desert Fox,” Irwin Rommel, who was the master of North Africa during his command… and participated in an abortive putsch against Hitler that cost him his life. Every vestige of those hateful regimes was erased across Europe.

Today, it is a crime to trade Nazi memorabilia online in most of Europe, and as one unwary American tourist discovered, you can get arrested for a public “Seig Heil” in Germany. It wasn’t just that the Germans and their allies were the big losers in that Second Great War; they represented a hateful philosophy of Christian white supremacy – murdering millions of innocents labeled inferior under that notion – for which even the current German government remains deeply embarrassed.

Tolerance sprouted in post-WWII Germany like no other… to the point where in the eyes of most nations in the world, the leader of the free and democratic world today is no longer the rather openly intolerant President of the United States – a man who equates those who protest Nazis, the KKK and other white supremacists with those who protest those hateful groups. It is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who cannot hide her powerful disdain for Donald Trump, his policies and his words.

The events surrounding the recent Nazi, KKK and other white supremacists march in Charlottesville, Virginia – and particularly the reactions of the U.S. President and so many bigots who long to return to an America of the 1950s (the hidden meaning of the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “America First”) when blacks and Jews “knew their place,” a time just before the explosion of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and all through the 1960s – is nothing short of stunningly embarrassing.

Cities and institutions across America were and are taking steps to remove Confederate statues, monuments and symbols – tributes to a time when slavery was both legal and, to some, worth fighting a war to preserve – in an effort to ease racial tensions in a era where tolerance was subsiding and blacks were facing continued discrimination that just did not seem to fade away. It was precisely the removal of a statute of Southern Civil War General, Robert E Lee (who himself favored healing post-Civil War wounds and eschewed monuments to himself), in Charlottesville that gave rise to that white supremacist march – featuring well-armed, torch-bearing ranks chanting horrific racist and anti-Semitic slogans (some from WWII Nazis) – one in which lives were lost and many severely injured.

Yet, the alt-right were particularly inspired as Donald J Trump castigated those removing these symbols of the racist Confederacy – including that Robert E Lee statue – with several on-camera remarks and this August 17^th tweet: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”

That Charlottesville statue of Lee, voted to be removed by the City Council, was really not a Civil War era icon. Huh? It, like most of the major Confederate statues and monuments, was commissioned long after the South had lost the war, for this particular work, 50 years after the war ended. Imagine Europeans constructing statues of Hitler or Mussolini in 1995!

The August 20^th NPR.com notes: “As President Trump doubled down on his defense of Confederate statues and monuments this week, he overlooked an important fact noted by historians: The majority of the memorials seem to have been built with the intention not to honor fallen soldiers, but specifically to further ideals of white supremacy.

“More than 30 cities either have removed or are removing Confederate monuments, according to a list compiled by The New York Times, and the president said Thursday [8/17] that in the process, the history and culture of the country was being ‘ripped apart.

“Groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans defend the monuments, arguing they are an important part of history. One of the leaders of that group, Carl V. Jones, wrote a letter on Aug. 14 condemning the violence and ‘bigotry’ displayed in Charlottesville, but he also denounced ‘the hatred being leveled against our glorious ancestors by radical leftists who seek to erase our history.’…

“Yet many historians say the argument about preserving Southern history doesn't hold up when you consider the timing of when the ‘beautiful’ statues, as Trump called them, went up.

“‘Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past,’ said Jane Dailey, an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. ‘But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future.’

“The most recent comprehensive study of Confederate statues and monuments across the country was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year. A look at this chart [measuring when most of the Confederate monuments were built] shows huge spikes in construction twice during the 20th century: in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and 60s. Both were times of extreme civil rights tension.”

Simply put, the vast majority of those “historical” Confederate monuments were built well-after the Civil War by the losers and their descendants with the expressed purpose of rekindling the kind racism that gave rise to the Civil War in the first place. Some of those modern racists and anti-Semites embrace Nazi symbolism that their fathers and grandfathers died fighting to erase in World War II. If you even have some sympathy for those “legitimately” trying to preserve such monuments, do you still feel that there is even the slightest reason to retain those post-Civil War replicas of racism now?

I’m Peter Dekom, and flushing the system of all attempts to rekindle the racism and anti-Semitism so many died to crush should be just a start.

Crush Them!

Donald Trump’s rather overt support for self-declared violent racists and anti-Semites – from various scatterings of white supremacist groups, including very well-armed and trained militia, to the KKK and the neo-Nazis who embrace a political views we fought a major war to erase – seems like an easy set-up for Democrats in the upcoming midterms. Add to that his attempt to decimate healthcare for lower income and a large number of middle Americans, his denigration of climate change responsibility and his bellicose push against Korea and Iran… effectively baiting these powers to accelerate their sophisticated military programs. There are almost no global leaders anywhere – except Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu who is facing serious corruption charges – who support much of anything Donald Trump has to say. How could the Dems fail to take back both houses of Congress in the mid-terms?

But if you dig deeper, it almost seems as if there were a conscious effort on the part of top GOP strategists to lure the Democrats into both a false sense of security (hubris a la Hillary Clinton?) and a focus on the wrong issues and the wrong opponent in those mid-terms.

Harsh reality number one: Donald Trump is not running for anything. Harsh reality number two: most of contested seats in the Senate (which has one third of its numbers up for reelection or election) are in red states, most with very-difficult-to-unseat incumbents. Harsh reality number three: as of now, anyway, the economy has the lowest unemployment rate in years and consumer confidence, the stock and real estate markets are soaring. Harsh reality number four: The Dems cannot promise to end the hated “Washington political gridlock” even if they sweep both houses of Congress; the President can still veto anything they pass. Harsh reality number five: As progressives and moderates battle within the party, the Democrats have yet to develop much of a platform of doable priorities; mostly they have become the not-so-loyal opposition party. Harsh reality number six: in addition to “it’s the economy, stupid,” all elections are local, and the GOP knows these lessons well as the Dems focus on Trump.

“[For] the many lawmakers facing reelection, 2018 is already very real -- as is the possibility that Republicans could get a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate… And given the number of Democratic incumbents facing re-election battles in not just battleground states but deeply GOP-leaning ones, Republicans could be poised to pad their numbers in the Senate even more… That means they would need to pick up eight Senate seats to get to 60 -- a tall order, but not impossible with a map as favorable for them as the one in 2018.” CBS News (11/21/16). Really?

Having lost four consecutive “special elections” to replace members of Congress moving into the Trump administration, the Democrats truly face difficult odds in 2018: “Heading into the election, the Republican Party holds a 52 seat majority in the Senate. Democrats hold 46 seats, and the remaining two are held by independents who caucus with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is on the defensive in 2018, as they are left defending 25 seats (two of which are held by independents), while only eight seats up for election in 2018 are held by Republican incumbents. The Democratic Party is further weakened by having to defend seats in a number of states which supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“Heading into the election, the Republican Party holds a majority of 241 seats to Democrats' 194 seats in the House. Due to the general lack of competition, it is unlikely that the Democratic Party will be able to flip control of the chamber in 2018. Democratic gains are predicted though, as the party of a newly elected president has historically lost seats in Congress in the following midterm election.” Ballotopedia.org. Do the Dems even have a shot at recapturing that stalwart, once Democratic, demographic of disenfranchised, under-educated white voters that swayed the 2016 elections? Can they really get minorities and younger citizens to do what they haven’t done in sufficient numbers for years: vote?

So who is that GOP strategist, smirking arrogantly at the Democratic flies swirling towards his spider-like web… and what exactly does he think will really happen? Here are the words of former Trump Campaign chief and senior White House Advisor, alt-right spokesman Stephen Bannon (pictured above), in an interview with The American Prospect, August 16^th.   “The longer they [the Dems] talk about identity [racial, gender and equal justice] politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” The same Steve Bannon whom the press suggested was in his final days as a White House advisor, the fomenter of much of the friction and in-fighting that newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, was purportedly hired to stop? The Bannon who told the President that there is no military solution for North Korea? That guy? Hmmmm.

Indeed, Bannon believes that America is worn out over the Russia-collusion issue, doesn’t even care about that anymore, and that “the U.S. is in an economic war with China, tensions with North Korea are a ‘sideshow,’ and white nationalists are ‘a collection of clowns.’” NYDailyNews.com, August 17^th. He thinks that all this negativity about Trump will be irrelevant for the mid-terms and will completely blow over by the presidential race in 2020. Indeed, Donald Trump seems to be looking for a military contest somewhere on the planet, since his perception seems to be that the nation always rallies around its president in times of such conflicts. Bannon wants the Dems to focus on Trump in the mid-terms… since those races are local and not national.

So how would Bannon write the basic GOP platform for these Congressional races – not to mention the equally important state, municipal and special district races? My thoughts, anyway. For those red states when Trump’s seemingly-unshakable base dominates:

“Donald Trump has been bold enough to take on the Washington elite, on both sides of the aisle… the ugly swamp he is draining… and called mainstream media out for its non-stop dissemination of fake news. Meanwhile, he shut down Kim Jong-Un… who pulled back from his threat to launch missiles to Guam when our president made clear what the results would be. Further, as consumer confidence, the stock market, real estate prices hit new record highs under his watch, unemployment is hitting new lows. We have a chance to generate a clear unstoppable majority, ending that horrible Washington gridlock, in Congress and in local politics nationwide, to bring on good healthcare before Obamacare collapses, tax reform to stimulate job creation, to shut down illegal immigration that is taking jobs away from Americans and sucking the life blood out of government programs never intended for them, restore a nation of law and order, live within a budget and make America Great Again. In my district, I need your help to get me elected (reelected) to take on the very important [insert litany of all the local issues that voters care about].”

For Republicans in contests where Donald Trump’s base does not dominate, substitute the following for the first two sentences above. “While there are some pretty strong political and economic benefits to having Donald Trump as president, and we need to keep that in mind, I am not simply a rubber stamp for his statements and policies. For example, I cannot support or condone the slightest impression that I or the Republican Party supports racism, white supremacy, the KKK or neo-Nazis. I represent the people in my district first and above all else, party politics notwithstanding.” Are you listening Republican Senators like Bob Corker (TN), Lindsey Graham (SC) and John McCain (AZ) who have questioned Donald Trump’s words and actions? Oh, and remember that infrastructure, important as it is, is already part of the GOP platform… the differences with the Dems lie in timing, amount and private versus public implementation.

What would I write for the Dems, other than reminding them that “it’s the economy, stupid” and “all elections are local” – with a hint that local state and municipal races are equally important? Hard to advise the party of “no to everything Trump” without some positive and implementable plans and programs. When the Dems generate more than the paltry offerings set out in my July 25^th blog, Schumer Tries to Resurrect a Moribund Democratic Party, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’ve got nothing. They aren’t going to win local races by campaigning primarily against Donald Trump, even though the temptation to do so is great. Stephen Bannon is a whole lot smarter than they think. Just like Hillary Clinton, too many Democrats still just don’t get it…

I’m Peter Dekom, and when there is so much terribly wrong with the mood and direction of this country, the Democrats continue to march like lemmings toward the sea of marginalization and meaninglessness.

Donald Trump’s War – Afghanistan

America’s longest war just got longer. Same players, same battleground that helped take down the Soviet Union in their 10 year war back in the 1980s. OK, we gave them a nudge by arming – through Pakistani intelligence – the Islamic radical jihadists (yup, Donald, them) with weapons of every description. They were the “mujahedeen,” who morphed and evolved into myriad terrorist groups, from al Qaeda to ISIS, over the years. They continued operate in Afghanistan with the full support of the new ultra-conservative rulers, the extreme Sunni practitioners, the Taliban.

After these “former allies” got through with the Soviets, after the Taliban were well installed as the new power in Afghanistan, these extremists turned their attention on the United States. Foreign fighters – including Saudis and Egyptian irregulars – trained on Afghan soil… plotted the 9/11/01 attacks on the United States. America retaliated, the Taliban collapsed, and the longest war in our history began.

We installed what George W Bush thought was a friendly regime, seemingly elected under a democratic system we imposed on them, but that leadership became, and continues to be, one of the most corrupt governments on earth. Even with US backing, that nascent government has never been able to take and hold much of any part of that rugged Central Asia nation except the capital city of Kabul and the immediately surrounding area. Opium poppies continue to flourish as a mainstay crop all over the country.

Traditional Afghan warlords still control specific regions despite the “elected” government in Kabul, but the Taliban slowly came back as the dominant force countering the US and its Kabul regime. Financial support from all over the fundamental Sunni Islamic world (including Saudi Arabian sources) combines with taxes and revenues from the drug trade to keep the Taliban going. Rumors of talks between Russian and Taliban leaders abound.

Neighboring Pakistan, a mostly Muslim nation born of partition from predominantly Hindu India, has been America’s purported ally in the region. But particularly since General Zia ul-Huq became Pakistan’s sixth president, immediately declaring martial law until his untimely and mysterious death in 1988, Islamic radicalism has grown inside Pakistan, particularly in the ungovernable Tribal Districts. Pakistan’s CIA/FBI equivalent – its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – is pretty well known to have strong affiliations with regional and local radical Islamists (including the Afghan Taliban), making reliance on Pakistan as a regional stabilizing force questionable at best. You will recall how Osama bin-Laden was living comfortably in Pakistan when he was captured and killed by Navy Seals.

Donald Trump campaigned on getting us out of Afghanistan. But now in office, Mr. Trump followed in Barack Obama’s footsteps, buying into his generals telling him that if US forces completely pulled out, Afghanistan would be run by precisely the same level of terrorists we have been fighting all over the world. So on August 21^st, Trump explained to the nation that it was, in his opinion, necessary to step up our military forces in Afghanistan, particularly training and special opps, to prevent this from happening. While he didn’t name numbers, most believe that the increase – “not a blank check” – would be on the order of magnitude of 4,000 new US forces, not much when you think of the level of troops we have had there earlier… with no significant cutback in Taliban operations.

Can we actually win that never-ending war? Nobody expects that outcome – really – now matter what promises might be suggested. But here’s how one expert, pro-Trump policy General Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, sees it in an interview published in the August 22^nd The Cipher Brief: “What he’s trying to do is improve the effectiveness of our ground and air operations. He’s going to have advisors down at lower levels so they can assist the Afghans with their own performance and also facilitate the effective use of airpower. He’s easing up on the rules of engagement so that when we have a target we don’t have to ask permission to fire at that target – and get a bunch of lawyers involved. He’s relying on the judgment of the commanders to make those kinds of calls in a combat situation and not have to ask permission. That just makes for very responsive operations.

“[The Taliban] is very familiar with our rules of engagement. It takes too long for us to get permission to shoot at the target. The Taliban senses what’s going on and simply drives next to a building. We’re not going to hit the building because there could be people in those buildings. They know our rules of engagement. We’ve had our pilots almost run out of gas flying in circles, waiting for permission.”

Former CIA Acting Director, Michael Morell, (also in The Cipher Brief) was a tad less certain of the outcome, particularly given the necessity of Pakistan’s support: “On Afghanistan, the President made two things very clear. First, he outlined, with great clarity, the threat we face from the situation in Afghanistan and the consequences of a U.S. withdrawal.  On the threat, his analysis was exactly right.  The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since just after 9/11, and al Qaeda and ISIS are the rise.  And, consequently, the terrorist threat posed to the U.S. is on the rise.

“On the potential consequences of a withdrawal, he was also right. I believe that the within a few months of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban would be knocking on the doors of Kabul.  They would take over the country, and they would again give safe haven to jihadist groups intent on attacking us. He made the case for a U.S. military commitment to the country…

“With regard to the President’s approach to delivering on this objective, I did not hear a new strategy. Most of what I heard was exactly what the Bush and Obama Administrations did and/or tried – integrate all aspects of national power, pressure Pakistan to change its support to the Taliban, tighten the financial squeeze on terrorist groups, ask for more from NATO, train Afghan security forces, and encourage the Afghan government to get its act together. The President said these were changes. That is not accurate. This is more of the same. And, the President gave me no reason to be confident that these approaches would be any more successful under him than they were under his predecessors…

“I did hear three new pieces to the strategy. First, no timetable for departure, rather a conditions-based departure. That makes sense. Two, no micromanagement from Washington in the conduct of military operations. That makes sense as well. But, while these may make sense, they will not be determinative. They will not turn the tide. The third new piece is asking India to do more in Afghanistan. That, most definitely, does not make sense. In fact, it is just the wrong thing to do. Indian involvement in Afghanistan is one of the key reasons why the Pakistanis support the Taliban.  So, more Indian involvement as actually destabilizing.” Pakistan is likely to work further to sabotage our efforts if their archenemy, India, is asked to step in… and does… as Trump suggested.

In the end, there is little evidence that we can do much more than mitigate the damage that will continue in Afghanistan, perhaps finding a graceful way of pulling out… and giving up.  I do not believe that there is a sustainable long-term plan to stabilize Afghanistan and neutralize that threat with any level of commitment that the American people would ever tolerate. It’s Donald Trump’s war now, and Steve Bannon (now back at Breitbart) will never let him forget that.

I’m Peter Dekom, and wouldn’t it be refreshing if Donald Trump actually did a little reading about history… not just in Central Asia… but anywhere?