Trump Vs. The Generals

This is going around Twitter now. It’s an excerpt from a short Business Insider piece based on the new Peter Bergen book: Trump And His Generals: The Cost Of Chaos:

“I’ve heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from the people on the ground,” Trump said at a press conference at the time.

One day after the meeting, Trump was said to have met with senior U.S. military officials in the Situation Room at the White House. In the meeting, Trump said the U.S. service members he spoke with “knew a lot more than you generals” and added that “we’re losing” in Afghanistan.

Trump also compared the senior military leaders with a consultant from a Manhattan restaurant from the late 1980s. Instead of heeding the advice of an overpaid consultant who merely suggested expanding a kitchen for renovations, Trump argued that it would have been more prudent, and cheaper, to solicit the advice of waiters from a restaurant.

One of the first groups of Afghanistan veterans to speak with Trump were U.S. Navy SEALs who spoke critically of the war.

“It’s unwinnable. NATO’s a joke. Nobody knows what they’re doing,” the SEALs told Trump, according to Bergen’s book. “We don’t fight to win. The morale is terrible. It’s totally corrupt.”

If true, this is impressive on Trump’s part. Two weeks ago, Trump announced the planned withdrawal of 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan. He is said to want all American soldiers out by the 2020 election. Good. We have been beaten there. There is no shame in knowing that you’ve been beaten. The shame is sending American soldiers to suffer wounds and to die because senior military and civilian officials can’t admit that they were wrong.

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