Has A Soft Coup By Military Leaders Made Trump A Lame Duck?

Afghan girls in Kabul in 1972 - but does the picture tell the whole truth? (Image source: David Icke)

Donald Trump's announcement on Monday that the USA is to increase troop numbers on the ground in Afghanistan should have been more a disappointment than a surprise to his supporters, and in spite of the affectations of horror and disgust, a source of rejoicing to his ememies in Washington, the mainstream media and Hollywood. What it means is that Trump is now a lame duck president, his strongest supporters in The White House have been forced out of office and the old guard,whoI have previously referred to as "The Perpetual War Party" have outflanked him completely in the one area that, outside the U.S. at least, inspired a little hope that things might be different.Unfortunately Trump's announcement means that Washington is back in full Globa l Hegemony mode, using its military might to install friendly regimes in unruly sovereign nations and impose its will on the world. Well that's the idea anyway. It seems The Perpetual War Party have learned nothing from the disastrous presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama.The speech itself was unusual in thet Trump stayed on script, there were none of those vague, rambling digressions those who enjoy his entertainment value if nothing else. Beyond the default rhetoric about justice, truth, freedom and blah blah,  the speech offered nothing except a promise to reiterate the follies of the recent past, an indication that campaign promises to disengage from middle eastern conflicts and focus on domestivc issues had been abandoned.

Regarding  Afghanistan, Trump has, as with Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen and South Sudam had two opposing voices screaming at him. On the right, the America First right whose views roughly coincide with his own,  demanded he make good his pledge to bring about the complete withdrawal of US troops from conflict zones. In the other, an unholy alliance of the globalist, cultural Marxist left, the human rights brigade and the military / industrial complex. The  Generals insisted withdrawal would leave Afghanistan at the mercy of the Taliban and even more extreme Islamist outfits; that the only way to prevent Afghanistan becoming a Muslim theocreacy depended on more US / NATO troops, rather than less or none on the ground,.

In narrowly military terms, the detail he announced on Monday seems irrelevant gesturing. He gave no firm detail at all, in fact, though it is believed that the current US deployment of some 8,000 troops has been boosted to 12,000. The Pentagon was unable to subdue Afghanistan with 100,000 US soldiers on its soil. An extra 4,000 in a country as anarchic and fragmented is purely symbolic. (Even the proposed deployment of an extra 85 British troops might not be enough to guarantee a favourable outcome.)

It is being said (though the source of the rumour is unknown) that Trump's decision to re-invade Afghanistan was swayed by him seeing pictures of young girls wearing   mini skirts and T-shirts strolling in Kabul back in 1972. 

According to "sources" National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster persuaded Trump to recommit to the Afghanistan war effort by showing him the black and white photo shown above. The idea was to demonstrate to the convince the president that bringing Afghan society into the modern era and turning it into a liberal democracy was not a hopeless cause that Western norms could be restored to Afghanistan through U.S. persistence in the war effort that has dragged on for 16 years.

In fact, western norms never existed in Afghanistan, apart from the affluent areas of the capital city, and the power of the central government did not reach far beyond Kabul. In rural areas warlords and tribal leaders held sway. The same holds true in many other Islamic nations, notably Iran,  Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein, Egypt and Libya before the fall of Gadaffi.

McMaster’s ploy was part of a long campaign effort by generals and lobbyists  who wanted him to recommit to the 16-year old war which Trump himself had called a ‘waste of money’ in a series of tweets before he got elected.’

But it is as symbolism that the speech was the important thing. Trump signalled, somewhat grudgingly, that he has surrendered to the military. His Generals – chief of staff John Kelly, who hung his head while Trump equivocated between Nazis and anti-Nazis in the wake of the Charlottesville riot; James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the Secretary of Defence; and HR McMaster, the National Security Advisor, have him by the bollocks. And as the old saying goes, "When you've got them by the bollocks their hearts and minds will follow. Get ready for more unwinnable wars, and more increasingly dangerous confrontations with Russia and China.RELATED POSTS:Lawless Libya [ ... ] Collapse Of Iraq [ ... ] Hearts, Minds and Precision bombing [ ... ] Why War Is Inevitable