No, not really. But he appears to want everybody to believe that he is, what with ISIS blitzkrieging towards Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and across North Africa, and his "violent extremism" confab this week making him look like an even bigger jihadi-symp than he did already:
The United States is considering slowing its military exit from Afghanistan by keeping a larger-than-planned troop presence this year and next because the new Afghan government is proving to be a more reliable partner, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Saturday.
Does anybody else find that reasoning hopelessly confusing? If the new Afghan goverment was proving to be a more reliable partner, wouldn't that mean we could bug out even sooner because they could better handle the war against the Taliban "insurgency" themselves? But if we're going to slow our exit for that reason, what does that mean? That the new Afghan government has better control over their soldiers such they they're slightly less likely to engage in freelance jihadism against U.S. military personnel?
Carter, on his first overseas trip since starting the Pentagon job Tuesday, also said the Obama administration is "rethinking" the counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan, although he did not elaborate.
Which means Commissar Carter was sent out there to create the impression that the White House is "re-thinking" its pell-mell, April 1975 Saigon-style retreat, but is in fact not doing anything of the sort.
No decisions have been made....
See?
....but President Barack Obama will discuss a range of options for slowing the U.S. military withdrawal when Afghan president Ashraf Ghani visits the White House next month, Carter said at a news conference with Ghani....
And will not act on any of them, because the only point is to be seen "discussing" it.
You want further proof?
Carter did not say Obama was considering keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, only that the president was rethinking the pace of troop withdrawals for 2015 and 2016.
So what difference does it make how quickly or slowly the retreat takes place? All that means is that the Taliban will take over gradually versus the Taliban taking over suddenly and catastrophically. Either way the Taliban will take over, America will have chosen to lose and surrender, and the pre-9/11 status quo ante will have been reestablished.
With one exception: ISIS and al Qaeda have so many better bases then Afghanistan from which to operate that it's actually probably unlikely that that country will again rise above backwater status in the Global Jihad. Except, perhaps, for the Afghan Taliban aiding its Pakistani counterpart in finally conquering Pakistan and adding that country's nuclear arsenal to ISIS's and al Qaeda's military stockpiles.
But at least it'll happen a little slower.
Yay?
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