Trump's Mindless Embrace of the Hawkish Credibility Obsession

Trump repeats the discredited credibility argument as if he were a full-fledged member of the foreign policy establishment.

Trump continued bashing the withdrawal from Afghanistan this week, and he brought up the incredibly stupid credibility argument again:

Trump, speaking at a National Guard Association of the U.S. conference in Detroit, said the Afghanistan withdrawal was “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country” and has ignited conflict across the globe.

“It gave us Russia going into Ukraine. It gave us the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, because it gave us lack of respect. We’re not respected,” Trump said.

It is ridiculous to claim that the withdrawal from Afghanistan had anything to do with the invasion of Ukraine, but it is truly deranged to claim that it somehow led to the October 7 attack in Israel because of a “lack of respect” for the U.S. The October 7 attack happened because of Israeli policies and actions in the years leading up to it, including the Netanyahu government’s indulgence of Hamas as a way to sabotage any chance of a peace process. It was the result of decades of occupation, repression, and dispossession. The push for a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel may have been a contributing factor in causing the attack, so in that respect both Trump and Biden share responsibility for making armed conflict more likely. The normalization deals that Trump is so proud of weren’t peace agreements, and to the extent that they mattered at all they made the later explosion of violence more rather than less likely.

Trump repeats the discredited credibility argument as if he were a full-fledged member of the foreign policy establishment. He has more in common with his former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster than either of them imagine. Both of them now traffic in absurd myths about the supposed sweeping effects of an overdue decision to terminate a war that had long since ceased to serve any legitimate national ends. McMaster and Trump couldn’t be more different in their temperaments and backgrounds, but they both end up reciting the same nonsense for self-serving reasons.

According to McMaster, Trump used to understand that Afghanistan was a lost cause. This used to be one of their big disagreements. Now Trump echoes the Blobbiest opinions out of shameless opportunism because it gives him a line of attack against Biden and Harris. The funny thing is that the people that agree with his newfound opposition to withdrawing from Afghanistan are some of the same former members of his administration that despise him most. Trump always capitulates to the hawks and ends up adopting their views in the end.

Trump and Vance keep coming back to the claim that the U.S. was embarrassed and humiliated by the withdrawal. I don’t buy it. No doubt the withdrawal was plagued with problems and ugly losses, but the real humiliation was continuing to send U.S. troops to fight an unwinnable war year after year for decades. The true embarrassment was the delusional commitment under successive administrations to perpetuating a war long after it was obvious that it had nothing to do with U.S. security. The enduring shame is that the U.S. kept inflicting great harm on the people of Afghanistan because of our leaders’ refusal to acknowledge that the policy wasn’t working and couldn’t work.

When he was president, Trump didn’t just continue the war in Afghanistan. He increased troop levels there early on. He didn’t really think the war was worth it, but he lacked the political courage to end it. He presided over the talks that led to the agreement with the Taliban, but left it to his successor to implement the product of his shoddy diplomacy. Biden then did what he couldn’t, and now Trump joins the chorus of screeching hawks to condemn the correct decision to get out.

Trump toyed with the idea of withdrawing from Afghanistan when he was president. He made a brief abortive attempt in the final months of his presidency after he lost his bid for re-election, but by then he was a lame duck consumed with stealing the election and never followed through. That was the story every time that he talked about withdrawing from this or that country: he would announce or order a withdrawal, his own appointees would drag their feet and slow-walk everything as long as they could, and then he would be talked out of doing it by the hardline advisers that filled his administration. Trump never ended any of the wars he inherited, and one reason for that was that he was so easily rolled by opponents of withdrawal whenever the subject came up.

Trump has never been an antiwar candidate or president, but he has benefited from being mistaken for one. His repeated denunciations of the withdrawal from Afghanistan should make it clear to everyone that he is on the side of the hawks in his party. If he wins in November, he is going to surround himself with them again. Trump and Vance are campaigning on mindless hawkish talking points, and that is exactly the kind of foreign policy you can expect from them if they win.