Yesterday was a big day for President Trump.
It began with him looking directly at the solar eclipse and ended with his primetime speech about America’s future in the Middle East.
Trump has previously been pretty critical about our presence in the Middle East.
Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2013
Most of his detractors have hammered this point home. It’s true that even as a candidate, Trump was against most international involvement. But a funny thing happens when you become president. You learn a lot, and the funny thing about being human is that you can change your mind.
So while critics at The Atlantic and other recalcitrant publications lambasted the plan, troops began mobilizing. Pakistan began to panic. So began America’s PSA to terrorists everywhere: beware the boots on the ground.
But why are people in America who aren’t a terrorists panicking too?
I get it. Sometimes people get anxious when leaders change their stances on big ticket items. But Trump has always supported our military. He’s loaded his cabinet with Generals, SEALs, and other ranking officials.
Trump may have once been critical of our mission in Afghanistan, but his support for those who carried it out never wavered. So stop melting down people.
We finally have a president who believes in the nobility of the ultimate sacrifice. He’s willing to call the enemy out by name and back our men and women in uniform with more than just rhetoric and budget cuts. In his speech yesterday, he opened with a prayer for those 10 missing sailors in the Pacific and closed by acknowledging Arlington National Cemetery as the world’s most “hallowed grounds than at any other spot on the face of the Earth.”
For the first time in a very long time, we have a president who is willing to step back, concede his power, and let our military handled the job they were trained to do.
This is the ultimate duty as a president, especially during wartime. It is wise strategy to now let Generals Mattis, Kelly, McMaster, Dunford, and all the soldiers they lead, take over.
As Trump said during his speech:
Micromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles. They’re won in the field, drawing upon the judgment and expertise of wartime commanders, and front-line soldiers, acting in real time with real authority, and with a clear mission to defeat the enemy.
Forcing our troops to sit on their hands while we wait for terrorism to wash up on our shores – as it did on September 11, 2001, is not good policy. It’s not diplomacy. It’s debilitating. When over a million people in uniform ask our country to please, let them defend us – who are we to say no? Who are we to tell them their preparedness, training, and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice is superfluous?
It’s about time we put trust back in our soldiers. Far too many thousands of men and women have died in the Middle East to pull out and let ISIS take over now. As Trump said yesterday, this is not nation building. This is ensuring liberty and justice for citizens right at home.
A country that squanders its military personnel is sure to fall. It’s high time we back our soldiers and let them go do what they’ve been trained to do. Putting bullets in bad guys isn’t bad policy. It isn’t offensive. It’s the surest way to see that another generation continues and sends the message that freedom is not free.