President Trump has decided to hand off responsibility of Afghanistan to the Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has in turn stated that we will be increasing the troop levels in that country by 4,000. Already American Soldiers have started dying there once again.
I wrote about my time in Afghanistan in 2004 and how I consider it to be a useless war. The troops dying today were just kids when I was knocking around the country, and there's a sense of guilt that comes with hearing that people hardly old enough to drink are getting gunned down. We were supposed to go so the kids didn't have to.
Nate and Adrian recount their own stories on the podcast, and you can see why it's so hard to win a war there. Out attitudes toward the local nationals is the biggest detriment to our success. We are abusive, dismissive and just massive assholes to even the people trying to help us.
Passing the responsibilities of Afghanistan to Mattis feels like Trump is trying to wash his hands of the whole mess. There is no clear mission statement, no outline of success. No matter what we do, we'll either be drained dry financially or completely lose the backing of the American people. It's an unwinnable war and it's already starting to slowly kill us as a country.