Darrell Castle talks about the President’s speech announcing a new strategy in Afghanistan.  It looks a lot like the old strategy. Transcript / Notes A NEW STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday September 1, 2017, and on today’s report I will be discussing President Trump’s speech, given on August 21, in which he discussed “our path forward in Afghanistan”.  He stated that his gut instinct told him to leave Afghanistan, and he likes to follow his instincts, but sitting behind the desk in the oval office gives one a perspective that he cannot see otherwise. The United States, with Donald Trump as President, is not the first empire to attempt to conquer, pacify, or force to the bargaining table the Afghan people, in whatever political form they existed at that time.  The armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Mongols, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union have all been broken or blunted on the rugged terrain, history, and religious fervor that make up Afghanistan.  Now Donald Trump has been convinced that he is different from the others and his investment of thousands of more troops will make the difference.  Perhaps he missed history at Fordham and the Wharton School.  That’s really sad because the people he is committing to battle are our future, our sons and daughters are being thrown into this “new strategy.” So, it looks as if the new strategy is the same as the old strategy.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, at least in this regard.  Your gut instinct was correct, Mr. President, and you should follow it.  You criticized President Obama for his no-win wars, and now you announce a strategy to do essentially the same, except with a few meaningless changes.  During the campaign you stated that Ron Paul was right—that we should never have gone into Afghanistan.  What happened to that opinion, Mr. President?  I imagine that it disappeared when all those Generals appeared in your administration. These are all Generals who have never won a war.  They all have sterling combat records but were dispatched to fight endless no win wars, and perhaps that clouds their perspective.  We seek victory in Afghanistan, the President said, but we can’t seem to define what victory even is.  How will we know it when we see it?  Who was the last General to have actually won a war and, therefore, would know victory when he saw it.  The World War ll generals led by General Eisenhower, I suppose, and that was 72 years ago.  Richard Nixon was quoted as having said that Ike would be able to control the Generals because he had been a General and would not be intimidated by them, but most presidents would be. More than 70 years of fighting and dying, but never being able to sail into the enemy’s harbor to accept surrender, has to affect the psyche of career officers service-wide.  The President spent several minutes of his speech complimenting the military and saying how grateful we are etc., but apparently he intends to continue using them in the same way. He said that he had arrived at three fundamental conclusions about America’s core interests in Afghanistan.  First, “our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made.”  That is an impossible goal unless he wants to commit American troops to Afghanistan permanently.  Perhaps that is what he means, i.e., to have Americans in protected enclaves in firebases around Afghanistan forever, but I don’t think so.  No, I think he is talking about the same strategy that failed in Vietnam, and that is to make it so costly in lives for the Taliban that they are anxious to enter into negotiations for some type of power-sharing arrangement.  Number one, that sounds a lot like the political arrangement that existed before we got there, and number two it won’t work. The enemy forces in Afghanistan will never negotiate in earnest.  Why should they negotiate when they can wait u...