Jack Hunter
Donald Trump wants to have a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate our troops.
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Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) has a better idea:
I’m all for a parade if it’s to celebrate bringing our young men and women home from these unauthorized wars overseas.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) February 7, 2018
He’s right.
On the same week the Pentagon is saying it will cost $45 billion for the U.S. to fight it’s 16th year in Afghanistan — now the longest war in our history with no end in sight — isn’t that an opportune time to examine why we have so many Americans still fighting overseas?
Trump used to think so. He said time and again for many years that we should bring our troops home.
On Afghanistan alone, Trump said in…
2011
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/122396588336349184
2012
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/237913235045638144
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/245592603716907009
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/276736261652357120
2013
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/289807790178959360
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/307568422789709824
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/403615352338128896
2014
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/539529416037384192
In 2015, Trump told CNN, concerning the U.S. role Afghanistan:
We made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place. At some point, are they going to be there for the next 200 years? At some point what’s going on? It’s going to be a long time.
Trump would later insist he never said it was a mistake to go into Afghanistan in 2001.
But there’s no mistaking the fact that his position for many years was that the U.S. should leave Afghanistan. That position changed the closer Trump got to the White House, and now the candidate that once promised to “drain the swamp” has become a president largely beholden to exactly the type of Washington foreign policy consensus he once challenged.
Trump has actually expanded U.S. presence in Afghanistan. He’s continuing pretty much on the same foreign policy path Presidents Bush and Obama traveled. His foreign policy has been similar to what Hillary Clinton would have likely done as well.
The swamp’s just fine.
But Americans are as war-weary as ever. The country is ready to bring the troops home . What is our endgame in Afghanistan at this point?
Couldn’t a populist president do a popular thing?
If there’s going to be a parade for our troops, it should be to celebrate the long-overdue end of their prolonged abuse by their government.
