NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
A ‘Trump Doctrine’? Clues in his new Afghanistan plan
WASHINGTON (AP) — Never
tip your hand to the enemy. No
timelines for military operations.
No free pass for a neighbor who
tolerates extremists or enables U.S.
foes.
In President Donald Trump’s
new Afghanistan strategy, elements
of a broader approach to America’s
most pressing national security
concerns begin to emerge, consis-
tent with his efforts in Iraq, Syria
and elsewhere. Though details
are limited, the plan draws on
organizing principles that are also
woven throughout his plans for
defeating the Islamic State group
and containing the threats posed by
North Korea and Iran.
Trump’s advisers say his Afghan
strategy refl ects a consistent world
view, both in terms of America’s
overseas objectives and the tactics
to achieve them. But it’s too soon
to say whether he is being driven by
a well-formed doctrine or merely
coining catchphrases on the fl y.
“We are not nation-building
again. We are killing terrorists,”
Trump said in his Monday night
speech. He was striving to differen-
tiate his plan from failed approaches
of the past.
As a candidate and then as pres-
ident, Trump has eluded those who
have tried to identify core beliefs
that can reliably predict how he’ll
approach any given issue. Critics
have painted him as a foreign policy
novice, focused only on somehow
showing he’s winning.
Trump ran on a nationalist
pledge to put “America First.” But
he explained this week that things
look different from the Oval Offi ce.
Conceding he was overriding an
initial instinct to withdraw from
Afghanistan, he peppered his
speech with vows to empower
commanders and to squeeze Paki-
stan for harboring the Taliban.
While Trump has cast his
approach as a fundamental
shift from other presidents, he’s
borrowed more from them than he’s
inclined to admit.
George W. Bush, too, sought to
pressure Pakistan to crack down on
the Taliban, even as he focused far
more on an idea Trump is explicitly
rejecting: promoting democracy
around the world.
And Trump’s limited approach
owes something to Barack Obama,
who in his second term scaled
back U.S. military involvement
in Afghanistan and settled on a
“He is clearly much
more willing to give
the military latitude
on tactical deci-
sion than President
Obama was.”
— James Jeffrey,
George W. Bush former deputy
national security advisor
commanders, along with decisions
about counterterror strikes against
targets in several countries.
“He clearly is much more
willing to give the military latitude
on tactical decision than President
Obama was,” said Ambassador
James Jeffrey, Bush’s former deputy
national security adviser. “That’s all
in all a good thing for this kind of
confl ict.”
AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File
In this April 2017 fi le photo, U.S. forces and Afghan security police are seen in Asad Khil near the
site of a U.S. bombing in the Achin district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan. Behind the
detail-scarce rhetoric of the new Afghanistan strategy, elements of President Donald Trump’s broader
approach to foreign confl icts emerge: secret military plans, no “nation-building” and a reliance on
regional players to squeeze wayward nations and extremist groups.
counterterror-focused mission not
dissimilar from the new American
strategy. A look at the pillars of
Trump’s foregin policy:
MIND YOUR BUSINESS
The days of the U.S. military
trying to “construct democracies”
are over, Trump declared. Instead,
he said “principled realism” will
guide U.S. decisions
That means there will be none
of Bush’s “nation-building” — no
expansive goal to build up Afghan-
istan’s institutions and ensure the
education of girls once the U.S.
ultimately withdraws.
Trump’s approach in Syria is
similar. There, as the Islamic State
is ousted from its last major strong-
holds and a power vacuum results,
Trump’s administration has said
it wants to help restore electricity,
water and sewage in areas freed
from IS — but no more. In Iraq,
the situation is somewhat easier
because there’s a globally backed
central government.
In Afghanistan, some questions
still must be cleared up. Despite
his vow of non-interference, Trump
emphasized he could hold back
future military and economic aid
unless the Afghan government
combats
problems
including
rampant corruption.
“We’re not going to tell these
countries how to govern, but we’re
going to condition our assistance on
reforms — that’s an internal contra-
diction,” said James Dobbins, a
senior diplomat in the past three
administrations and former special
envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
KEEP YOUR PLANS QUIET
Of all the critiques of Trump’s
plan, the loudest is that he declined
to tell Americans how many more
U.S. troops will be sent to Afghani-
stan after 16 years of fi ghting.
His rationale is simple: Deny
the Taliban and other extremists
the advantage of anticipating U.S.
military moves.
However, the contours of the
Pentagon’s plan have been known
for months. Senior offi cials said
Tuesday up to 3,900 more troops
will go, some possibly within days.
Being unpredictable to U.S.
adversaries has been a consistent
Trump focus. The president was
similarly coy in April in the days
before he attacked Syrian President
Bashar Assad’s forces for using
chemical weapons. He has repeat-
edly refused to entertain questions
about a potential pre-emptive attack
on North Korea.
“We don’t talk about that. I never
do,” Trump has said.
DON’T “MICROMANAGE”
Rather than centralize military
decision-making in the White
House, a critique often leveled at
Obama, Trump has delegated much
of the authority to his defense secre-
tary and warzone commanders.
“Micromanagement from Wash-
ington, D.C., does not win battles,”
he said in his Afghanistan speech.
Even before he unveiled his
Afghan plan, the White House
announced he’d given the Pentagon
fi nal say on how many troops to send.
And in April, his top commander in
Afghanistan was allowed to use the
“mother of all bombs,” the largest
non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in
combat. There was no need for the
White House signoff.
Trump has similarly ceded
decision-making about military
actions in Syria and Iraq to his
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal
jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday
to convict four defendants who
were retried on accusations that they
threatened and assaulted federal agents
by wielding assault weapons in a 2014
confrontation to stop a cattle roundup
near the Nevada ranch of states’ rights
fi gure Cliven Bundy.
In a stunning setback to federal
prosecutors planning to try the Bundy
family patriarch and two adult sons
later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky
Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all
10 charges, and delivered not-guilty
fi ndings on most charges against Scott
Drexler and Eric Parker.
More than 30 defendants’ supporters
in the courtroom broke into applause
after Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria
Navarro ordered Lovelien and Stewart
freed immediately and set Wednesday
morning hearings to decide if Parker
and Drexler should remain jailed
pending a government decision
whether to seek a third trial.
“Random people off the streets,
these jurors, they told the government
again that we’re not going to put up
with tyranny,” said a John Lamb, a
Montana resident who attended almost
all the fi ve weeks of trial, which began
with jury selection July 10.
“They’ve been tried twice and
found not guilty,” Bundy family
matriarch Carol Bundy said outside
court. “We the people are not guilty.”
North Korea photos
suggest new solid-fuel
missile designs
TOKYO (AP) — North Korea’s
state news agency has released photos
of diagrams that show what appear to
be the designs of one or possibly two
new missiles.
The diagrams were seen hanging
on a wall behind leader Kim Jong Un
during a visit to a plant that makes
solid-fuel engines for the country’s
ballistic missile program.
One showed a missile called
Pukguksong-3, which appears to be the
latest in the Pukguksong, or Polaris,
series. The other was harder to discern
but appeared to be in the “Hwasong,”
or Mars, series. The photos were
released by the Korean Central News
Agency on Wednesday.
The KCNA report said Kim called
on workers to produce more solid-fuel
rocket engines and rocket warhead tips.
Charlottesville to shroud
statues after violence
The Charlottesville City Council
voted to drape two Confederate
statues in black fabric during a
chaotic meeting packed with irate
residents who screamed and cursed at
councilors over the city’s response to a
white nationalist rally.
The anger at Monday night’s
meeting, during which three people
were arrested, forced the council to
abandon its agenda and focus instead
on the tragedy that surrounded the
rally. Covering the statues is intended
to signal the city’s mourning for
Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer,
who was killed when a car slammed
into a crowd protesting the rally.
“I think what you saw last night
was a traumatized community
beginning the process of catharsis,”
Mayor Mike Signer told The
Associated Press on Tuesday.
The council meeting was the fi rst
since the “Unite the Right” event,
which was believed to be the largest
gathering of white nationalists in a
decade. The demonstrators arrived in
Charlottesville partly to protest the
city council’s vote to remove a statue
of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
That removal is in the midst of a
legal challenge. A state law passed
in 1998 forbids local governments
from removing, damaging or defacing
war monuments, but there is legal
ambiguity about whether that applies
to statues such as the Lee monument,
which was erected before the law
was passed. A judge has issued an
injunction preventing the city from
removing the Lee statue while the
lawsuit plays out.
few were treated for heat exhaustion.
Local authorities were vigilant in
the aftermath of the deadly protests
in Virginia and the president’s
comments last week about both sides
having blame for violence at the
white supremacist rally.
Mayor Greg Stanton had
unsuccessfully called on the president
to not hold the rally here so soon after
the trouble in Charlottesville.
U.S. says some remains
of sailors found
on USS John McCain
SINGAPORE (AP) — Navy divers
searching a fl ooded compartment
of the USS John S. McCain found
remains of some of the 10 sailors
missing in a collision between
the warship and an oil tanker, the
U.S. Pacifi c Fleet commander
said Tuesday as he promised a full
investigation.
Adm. Scott Swift also said at a
news conference in Singapore, where
the McCain is now docked, that
Malaysian offi cials had found one
body, but it had yet to be identifi ed
and it was unknown whether it was a
crew member.
The collision before dawn on
Monday near Singapore tore a gaping
hole in the McCain’s left rear hull
and fl ooded adjacent compartments
including crew berths and machinery
and communication rooms. Five
sailors were injured.
Swift would not say where in the
destroyer the bodies were found.
Eclipse crowds may have
doubled Wyoming’s
Trump speech in Phoenix population
Wyo. (AP) — The
draws big crowd, protests least CHEYENNE,
populated state in the nation has
PHOENIX (AP) — Minor scuffl es
and shouting matches erupted
between protesters and President
Donald Trump’s supporters on
Tuesday with authorities on high alert
as thousands of people lined up in
the triple-digit heat to attend his fi rst
political rally since the violence in
Charlottesville, Virginia.
The scene was noisy, but largely
peaceful as Phoenix police kept
most members of the two opposing
groups behind barricades and apart
on separate sides of the street. As a
police helicopter hovered overhead,
offi cers wearing riot gear and
carrying rifl es sauntered through the
lane between the sides. Authorities
said no one was arrested, though a
LET LOCALS LEAD
In Afghanistan, as in Iraq and
Syria, Trump’s plan centers on
training local forces to fi ght insur-
gents rather than relying on Amer-
icans to do most of the fi ghting.
While the same strategy was
employed by Obama, Trump has
claimed credit since taking offi ce.
“The confi dence that the Amer-
ican people and the world heard
last night from our commander in
chief derives from the fact that this
is exactly the approach that Presi-
dent Trump directed in Iraq and in
Syria,” Vice President Mike Pence
said Tuesday.
- EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY -
BRIEFLY
Jury refuses to convict
four in Nevada ranch
standoff retrial
CRACK DOWN
As Trump vowed to get tough on
Pakistan, accusing it of giving “safe
haven to agents of chaos, violence
and terror,” diplomatic and military
offi cials heard echoes of his plan for
North Korea.
For more than a decade, the U.S.
has pressed Islamabad to snuff out
Taliban sanctuaries. Many of the
group’s leaders reside in Pakistan,
traveling freely across the Afghan-
istan border. Taliban wounded are
treated in Pakistani hospitals.
With North Korea, it’s China
that must feel the weight of U.S.
pressure, Trump has said. He has
tried to squeeze Beijing into cutting
off lifelines of economic support to
North Korea to make it harder for
Pyongyang to develop weapons
that could harm the U.S.
seen total eclipses before but likely
never as many people.
The amount of traffi c during
Monday’s eclipse suggests Wyoming
may have temporarily doubled its
population of 585,000 — as some
predicted it would.
The Wyoming Department of
Transportation counted 536,000 more
vehicles than usual on Wyoming’s
roads and highways — a 68 percent
increase.
“I have no doubt that we had
hundreds of thousands of visitors,”
department spokesman Doug McGee
said Tuesday. “I would guess that
yesterday was the most people that
ever have been in Wyoming at one
time.”
Administrative Support / Inside Sales
Great work environment. Super
awesome team. Good base pay
PLUS commissions. Retirement plan.
Weekends off. Interested?
We are looking for a motivated,
confident individual to join our team at
East Oregonian in Pendleton. This full-
time position will do inside sales and
provide administrative support to the
advertising director and publisher.
No media or sales experience? No
problem, as long as you understand
the importance of great customer
service, working hard and a desire to
enjoy your job.
Could this be you?
Benefits include Paid Time Off (PTO)
and 401(k)/Roth 401(k) retirement
plan. Send resume and letter of
interest to EO Media Group, PO Box
2048, Salem, OR 97308-2048 or e-mail
hr@eomediagroup.com
Come work with us!
We are an awesome team.
Send resume and letter of interest to
EO Media Group,
PO Box 2048 • Salem, OR 97308-2048,
by fax to 503-371-2935
or e-mail hr@eomediagroup.com
Come work with us! We are an awesome team.