Inside Track
Secretary of Defense: “We Are Not Winning in Afghanistan”
During testimony on June 13 before the Senate Armed Services Committee in support of President Trump’s Defense Department budget request for Fiscal Year 2018, Defense Secretary James Mattis asserted, “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. And we will correct this as soon as possible. I believe by mid-July we will be able to brief you in detail.” Mattis’ statement was made during a tense exchange with the committee’s chairman, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).
McCain, one of the Senate’s most outspoken interventionists on foreign policy, expressed noticeable frustration with what he perceives as a failed U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, telling Mattis during the hearing, “We’re now six months into this administration. We still haven’t got a strategy for Afghanistan. It makes it hard for us to support you when we don’t have a strategy. We know what the strategy was for the last eight years: Don’t lose.”
The Arizona senator also warned Mattis that senators will “start getting more vocal in our criticism” if a plan isn’t delivered soon. “I was confident that within the first 30 to 60 days [of the Trump administration] we would have a strategy from which to start working,” McCain said. “So, all I can tell you is that unless we get a strategy from you, you’re going to get a strategy from us.”
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