Inside the Failed Mission to Get Trump to Care About Afghanistan
In the months leading up to Gen. John W. Nicholson’s departure from Afghanistan in September, his top advisers and staffers set out on an unusual mission, one that took place not in the foothills of the Hindu Kush but inside the walls of Bagram Air Base.
Their goal: Find a way to convince President Donald Trump and members of Congress to support troops staying on the ground in the 17-year-long war, according to three individuals involved in the discussions. It was the summer of 2018, public support for U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan had waned, and the president was again threatening to pull the plug on the U.S. mission. Nicholson and his team feared that the American public, too, no longer understood why troops needed to stay.
The goal, one of Nicholson’s top staffers said, was to “get people to care again.” And to do so, they sought to better publicize how the U.S. was increasingly involved in monitoring the growing peace protests across the country and hoped to capitalize off the movement to broker talks between the Taliban and the government.