On Friday, August 25, President Donald Trump managed to once again make the news cycle all about his administration and the constantly changing internal staff dynamics that have roiled the West Wing for the last four weeks. First it was several top national security aides who were relieved of duty, then it was Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon.The latest casualty in the ranks: former Breitbart editor and Bannon ally Sebastian Gorka.
Two weeks later, the exact specifications of Gorka’s ouster are disputed ––Gorka insists he resigned, but an official White House statement implied that he was forced out by Chief of Staff John Kelly’s new regime––but progressives and even establishment Republicans don't particularly care how it happened as long as he’s no longer wandering around the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Gorka’s resignation letter to President Trump is a sight to be seen. In the typical bombastic and confrontational style that Trump loved and his enemies hated, he all but accused “the globalists” and moderates of marginalizing the true believers of Trump-inspired nationalism. Coming from a guy who has said many ridiculous and offensive things in the past about Muslims and the Islamic faith––so offensive, in fact, that the FBI terminated his contract as a lecturer for cadets on terrorism after they found out his teaching method was more about indoctrination than fact––one needs to be extremely skeptical about anything Gorka says.
But even meglomaniacs can make good points every now and then. And believe it or not, Gorka’s observation in his letter of resignation about the course of the war in Afghanistan and the lack of strategic detail in President Trump’s war plan was right on the money. He wrote:
“When discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory.”
It would be simple to dismiss these few sentences as the ravings of a disgruntled former employee. But Gorka’s point is actually quite poignant because it captures the feeling of drift that many Americans outside the Beltway––and many national security experts inside of it––have long felt toward a war that will seemingly never end.
During Trump’s first major address to the nation, not a second was spent was on explaining what the overarching strategy in Afghanistan was or what exactly he meant when he said that the Afghan government would need to meet specific conditions for Washington’s support to continue. What we were offered, rather, was a continuation of what the U.S. and its NATO allies have been doing for close to 16 years: kill terrorists until there are none of them left to kill, regardless of their ability to target America; fight the Taliban and weaken them militarily until they agree to peace talks; protect the Afghan government and prevent it from falling apart; and pressure Pakistan to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries within in borders without exception.
As has been rightly commented on throughout the week, Trump’s Afghanistan policy isn't a policy at all, but a collection of tactics and operational procedures. If you were hoping for a plan with a clear and realistic endgame or a set of objectives that the U.S. can actually achieve, the speech disappointed. And if you have a loved-one in the armed forces or happened to be an active-duty soldier yourself, there may have even been a sense of deja-vu.
When Gorka writes that the “omission” of an end state in Trump’s remarks should worry national security professionals, he is absolutely correct.
Indeed many national security professional are worried. Barnett Rubin, a State Department senior adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration, is one of America's foremost scholars on the region, and he certainly isn't pleased with Trump’s strategy (or the absence of one). Others, like former NSC counterterrorism director Joshua Geltzer, wonder how Trump can carry out his strategy when he appears to be undercutting his own State Department.
The second part of Gorka’s statement––that Americans are increasingly troubled by 16 years of war whose returns are marginal at best and nonexistent at worst––is about as astute as saying that the sky is blue. But even so, it’s an important point to express openly because it provides a reminder to the foreign policy establishment that ordinary Americans have long tired of the conflict.
In fact, when asked by Fox News this past June if they would support a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan along the lines of what Trump proposed, Americans surveyed opposed it by a 2:1 margin. Among Trump’s core demographic––whites without a college degree––nearly 60 percent opposed the introduction of more troops to the war. Indeed, if recent political science research is accurate, Trump’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan may even hurt him in counties that proved to be pivotal for him in 2016.
Sebastian Gorka may be wrong about many things, but in the war that President Trump just chose to extend, he couldn't be more right.
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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.