Here Are All 30 Tweets Trump Made About Afghanistan Before Yesterday’s News

By Shane Ryan  |  August 22, 2017 | 9:22am
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Politics Features Afghanistan
Here Are All 30 Tweets Trump Made About Afghanistan Before Yesterday’s News

Yesterday, Donald Trump gave a strategy speech on Afghanistan in which he deepened America’s involvement in an unwinnable 16-year quagmire. The speech was light on details (shocker, I know), but it followed a long session with generals at Camp David, and will involve deploying more U.S. troops to the country. It also invoked a possible partnership with India, and putting “pressure” on Pakistan, which, clearly, could lead to an entirely new conflict in the region. All of it, per the Times, represented a “weary acceptance” of the status quo after trying and failing to hold his generals accountable for their nearly two decade-long failure to bring about anything resembling “victory.” In the immediate aftermath of the speech, even some Republicans couldn’t contain themselves from calling it a rotten idea:

Sixteen years and the lives of over 2,000 American heroes are more than enough of a price to have paid to eradicate a terrorist sanctuary,” Gov. John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, who has positioned himself as a possible primary race candidate in four years, said in a statement. “America cannot afford to make an open-ended commitment of further lives and treasure to the improbable proposition of building a cohesive nation in Afghanistan.”

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, flatly opposed a troop increase. “The mission in Afghanistan has lost its purpose, and I think it is a terrible idea to send any more troops into that war,” he said in a statement.

There’s not much left to say about this—how many ways can you call it an obvious blunder that will cost American and innocent Afghan lives?—so I’ll let Trump speak for himself. Here are all 30 tweets he made using the word “Afghanistan,” starting in 2011 and ending in 2015, per a Twitter search.

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