Speaking on Monday, President Trump once again decried the so-called “endless wars,” claiming that U.S. soldiers are “in love with” him because he is extricating America from those conflicts. However, Trump added, the “top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t [in love with me] because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
President Trump made this comment in the wake of an unflattering piece published by The Atlantic, in which anonymous sources claimed that he has disparaged fallen soldiers and wounded veterans. That story clearly put the president on the defensive, so he lashed out. His response was another example of how poisonous the “endless wars” rhetoric has become.
One can question or criticize America’s reaction to the September 11 hijackings, or even argue that the U.S. military no longer needs to fight the terrorists overseas, without impugning the motives of others who disagree. But President Trump chose to malign the intentions of those leading his own Department of Defense. It’s a nasty smear, and one that is also grossly inaccurate.
Anyone who has been watching the Pentagon these past several years knows that it has become obsessed with “great power competition.” China and Russia are the near-peer foes the DoD wants to focus on—not the comparatively small-time jihadists. This shift in priorities was enshrined in the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which lists terrorist threats as subordinate to both “strategic competition” with the “revisionist powers” (meaning China and Russia), as well as the challenges posed by “rogue regimes” such as Iran and North Korea. The 2018 strategy document did not fall out of the sky. As I’ve written previously, the U.S. military had already pivoted away from large-scale deployments to fight the jihadists during President Obama’s two terms. That reduced footprint increased only slightly under President Trump.
After claiming that the top Pentagon leadership is only happy when they get to bomb people, the president immediately lauded his own decision-making in the war against ISIS. Trump said this:
But we’re getting out of the endless wars; you know how we’re we doing. We defeated 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate — 100 percent. When I was in — when I came in, it was a mess; it was all over. They have it, in a certain color, all ISIS. A year later, I said, “Where is it?” “It’s all gone, sir. Because of you, it’s all gone,” because of my philosophy. But all gone. And I said, “That’s good. Let’s bring our soldiers back home. Some people don’t like to come home. Some people like to continue to spend money.” One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another, and that’s what it was.
And what is President Trump’s “philosophy” for destroying the ISIS caliphate? He explained before the 2016 presidential election that he would “bomb the hell out of those oil fields,” so much so that he “wouldn’t send many troops because you won’t need them by the time I got finished.” The Trump administration did implement a version of this plan, relying on heavy bombardments with a light footprint in Iraq and Syria.
We are thus left with President Trump impugning the motives of the Pentagon for carrying out the very same strategy for which he advocated and also still wants to claim credit.
The administration has adhered to the same philosophy in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military ramped up bombings as part of Trump’s plan. “Over the last four days, we have been hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last ten years!,” he tweeted on September 9. 2019. The president was referring to the bombing campaign in Afghanistan. He had temporarily called off negotiations with the Taliban at the time, but later gave his blessing for a withdrawal deal.
The Trump strategy, such as it is, hasn’t been to defeat the Taliban militarily, but instead to convince the jihadists to lay down their arms—by bombing them. That hasn’t worked. The Taliban and its allies, including al-Qaeda, went on the offensive immediately after the State Department formally agreed to a withdrawal deal on February 29 in Doha.
Does the U.S. military want to stay in Afghanistan, so defense companies can sell more bombs? Hardly. The Pentagon has repeatedly endorsed the State Department’s diplomatic efforts.
“It is time for this war in Afghanistan to end,” Gen. John W. Nicholson said during his farewell speech in September 2018. Nicholson had been the top American commander in-country throughout much of Trump’s first two years in office. Gen. Nicholson’s successor, Gen. Austin S. Miller, then oversaw an air campaign that was intended to force the Taliban into making concessions at the negotiating table. Thus far, the Taliban has extracted concessions from the U.S. without giving up anything of substance in return.
The diplomatic approach has been blessed by Trump’s picks to lead the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said in March 2018 that the U.S. looked forward to “victory” in Afghanistan, but this wouldn’t be a military triumph. For Mattis, “victory will be a political reconciliation” with the Taliban. One of Mattis’s successors, Secretary Mark Esper, has overseen the drawdown of American forces from Afghanistan. Esper, who used to be employed by Raytheon, says there will be fewer than 5,000 American troops in the country by November. Like Mattis, Esper believes that “great power competition” means the U.S. needs to extricate itself even more so from the 9/11 wars.
The simple fact of the matter is that no senior U.S. military official is thwarting President Trump’s desired withdrawals from Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), announced additional drawdowns just today.
The chief reason the U.S. has forces in those countries in 2020—more than three and half years into Trump’s presidency—is that the jihadists have kept fighting. Trump could have pushed for a full withdrawal from the 9/11 wars by now, but he chose not to do so. It’s easy to see why—ISIS has survived the end of its territorial caliphate, and other terrorist threats continue to emerge.
There is much to criticize about the U.S. military’s handling of the post-9/11 conflicts. But the idea that the Pentagon has kept the “endless wars” going for its own nefarious ends is not based in reality. It is something one would expect to read on an anti-American conspiracy website.
Photograph by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images.
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