What an Afghanistan Victory Looks Like Under the Trump Plan Mr. Trump said that He said we’re going to win, but he didn’t make it clear how we’re going to win. Ever since 2008, when Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "we can’t kill our way to victory," the cornerstone of American policy in Afghanistan has been not about obliterating the Taliban but pummeling them toward peace talks. 22, 2017 KABUL, Afghanistan — Shortly after President Trump’s speech, a retired Afghan general recalled a Taliban fighter who had taken up arms after six of his sons were killed, one by one. The American military has a $6.5-billion plan to make the Afghan air force self-sufficient and end its overreliance on American air power by 2023. A peaceful, stable Afghanistan is victory for the Afghan people and the goal of the Coalition." As might be expected, the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, scoffed at President Trump’s speech as "nothing new." But many Afghans on the government side had a similar take. Within hours of President Trump’s speech, the American military commander in Kabul made that clear. Hajji Naqibullah said three of his own cousins were killed during the fight in Sangin, where more American and British soldiers died than anywhere else in Afghanistan, and which fell to the insurgents in March after a yearlong campaign. Gen. Joseph Votel, the top commander in the Middle East, told reporters traveling with him to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday that they would start arriving in within "days or weeks." The vision of victory laid out by American generals, then and now, has been to help a friendly Afghan government hold Kabul and other crucial cities and convince the Taliban that they cannot again rise to national power, as they did in the ’90s.
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