{"id":72795,"date":"2017-06-15T12:45:59","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72795"},"modified":"2017-06-15T12:45:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:45:59","slug":"second-guessing-mattis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72795","title":{"rendered":"Second-guessing Mattis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post arm-chair generals scrutinize the Trump Administration writing a blank check to the Defense Department for the war in Afghanistan. The Post asks Mattis “What’s your end game?”<\/a><\/p>\n

James Mattis, Defense Secretary explains that he intends to run the battlespace better than the Obama Administration which used the Lyndon Johnson method of looking over the shoulder of commanders and making every troop deployment a political decision from the bowels of the White House;<\/p>\n

While Mattis declined to give an estimate of how many more forces he might send to Afghanistan, he told lawmakers at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing that he would deliver an Afghan strategy by mid-July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been given some carte blanche to \u2014 to draw up a strategy or a number that\u2019s out of step with the strategy,\u201d Mattis said. \u201cI think right now what we have to look at is what kind of capabilities do we bring to them because the Afghans have proven they will fight.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the Obama Administration sent a surge of troops to Afghanistan, they also told the Taliban how long those troops would be there, so the Taliban just had to hunker down and wait for the expiration date. Mattis says he won’t give the Taliban that advantage;<\/p>\n

During Wednesday\u2019s hearing, Mattis laid some of the blame for the current situation in Afghanistan on Obama\u2019s timeline, noting that pulling forces at a predetermined pace only emboldened the Taliban and strained a government and military that wasn\u2019t ready to fight without U.S. and NATO support.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why would I come to you and tell you there\u2019s some alternative now, where we put some forces back in?\u201d Mattis asked. \u201cWe would have to change the priorities, we would have to put it in a more regional construct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mattis said that adding more forces in Afghanistan would \u201crestore the high ground\u201d by lending more U.S. assets to help the Afghans with air support and in turn would buy them more time to mature their forces and reduce casualties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Taliban had a good year last year, and they\u2019re trying to have a good one this year,\u201d Mattis said Tuesday of the anti-Afghan government militant group that has been fighting U.S.-led troops since 2001. \u201cRight now, I believe the enemy is surging.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Imagine that, the Pentagon is not going to repeat failures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post arm-chair generals scrutinize the Trump Administration writing a blank check to the Defense … Second-guessing Mattis<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}