Trump adds Afghanistan to long list of issues that defy easy fix

Bloomberg

Donald Trump vowed as a presidential candidate to reduce America’s military involvement abroad and quickly defeat IS terrorists. His announcement of an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan to battle extremists is a concession that as president he cannot meet either promise. Trump’s shift on Afghanistan is the latest indication of how difficult it has been to deliver on his “only I can fix it” campaign theme, as setbacks and delays on issues including health care, immigration and a tax code overhaul have defied his assurances of easy answers to vexing problems.
“My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts,” Trump said. “But all of my life I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”
In his prime time address, Trump stood before a gathering of troops and invoked his study of Afghanistan “in great detail and from every conceivable angle” and months of deliberations by “my cabinet and generals.” He said he will keep American forces engaged there as long as it takes to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, giving the green light to a Defense Department plan to send 4,000
additional personnel.
As with his proposals to overhaul the US tax code and repeal Obamacare, the president provided relatively few specifics on how he would proceed. He hasn’t yet been able to deliver a result on either of those priorities. Yet Trump’s move won applause from establishment Republicans including House Speaker Paul Ryan. “I’m pleased with the decision,” Ryan said at a CNN town hall after the speech. “We cannot allow another safe haven for terrorists to materialize again.”

BANNON BLASTS
But it’s unclear whether he can win over voters who elected him on a promise to disentangle the US from long and costly foreign military missions and put “America First.” He may hear from them, when he holds a rally in Arizona.
Hours before Trump’s speech, Stephen Bannon, the populist architect of Trump’s election victory who left the administration, signaled political danger ahead. Breitbart News, the conservative website where Bannon resumed his previous position as executive editor, published an article headlined, “America First? With Steve Bannon Out, Globalists Push for More War Abroad.”
After the speech, the website attacked the announcement as a “flip-flop.” The split between establishment Republicans and energized right-wing insurgents ultimately killed Trump’s hopes for a repeal of Obamacare. And these intra-party tensions will likely increase as Trump faces one of the busiest, toughest months of his presidency, with battles over an increase in the legal debt limit to avert a first-ever US default and a clash over federal spending that could shut down the government.

MEASURE OF PATIENCE
That leaves little time to fulfill another promise, to overhaul the US tax code this year, which is looking increasingly unlikely. Alice Stewart, a Republican political strategist who worked for Trump’s final primary rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, said the president still should be able to gain a measure of patience for his Afghanistan policy by conveying the long arc of the war there and the time is may take turn around the conflict. “It isn’t a quick fix and he has pulled together teams of the best and brightest and they have determined the best strategy going forward,” Stewart said.
How much political distance Trump is willing to risk from his base may become clearer at a campaign rally planned in Phoenix, less that 200 miles from the Mexican border. The president’s promises to build a wall along the border and step up deportations of undocumented workers were among the most visceral themes of his campaign.
He enters the legislative fracas increasingly isolated from the Republican establishment and corporate America after his comments on Aug. 12 violence in Virginia appeared to confer legitimacy on white supremacists.