On Monday, President Donald Trump laid out his strategy for the war in Afghanistan going into 2018 and beyond. While reaction to the strategy was somewhat mixed, there was one thing that stuck out: Wait, didn't former President Barack Obama say that we'd be done with this by now?
Why yes, yes he did. Let's take a trip in the way-back machine and look at some now-regrettable tweets, dug up by Fox's Stephen Miller:
FACT: Unlike President Obama, Romney has no plan to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 9, 2012
As it turns out, neither did President Obama.
President Obama: "I told you we’d end the war in Iraq. We did. I said we’d end the war in Afghanistan. We are." #PromiseKept
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 24, 2012
Narrator: we did not.
FACT: President Obama has a plan to end the war in Afghanistan in 2014—Mitt Romney does not.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 22, 2012
It is August 22, 2017, and the war is still going on.
President Obama: “We’re ending the war in Afghanistan because after a decade of war, it’s time to do some nation-building here at home.”
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 23, 2012
The war did not end.
"Because of the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is coming to a close."
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 4, 2012
I'll let Rose from the movie Titanic loosely sum up how "coming to a close" is going:
President Obama: "By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 13, 2013
The year 2014 came and went and the war is still happening.
The United States invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. To put this into more tangible units, at the time the invasion began, I was in the fifth grade. I have now been out of college with a bachelor's degree longer than I was in college, and I graduated on time without skipping any grades.
More horrifyingly, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) made the observation that people who weren't yet born when the invasion began will be sent to go fight in Afghanistan in just over a year.
I had hoped the Afghanistan war would end soon, but now it's inevitable that babies born during the war will be deploying to the war in 2019
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 22, 2017
This war can't go on forever, and hopefully Trump is able to one day end it, responsibly.