Trump has made some friends

There you go, Mr President, say the right thing and you make friends. It won't make any difference to the outcome of the war in Afghanistan by sending 3,900 more US troops to aid and assist the Afghan seurity forces but it was still the right moral thing to do. It shows you don't want Afghanistan to go down the tubes, you care for the Afghans' future, I think, and you don't want the humiliation of a total withdrawal, leaving Afghanistan to its fate. The speech was full of grand words, as expected, and there will be no more nation-building, but Trump has made it clear he's going to go after al-Qaeda and Isis in Afghanistan and give more help to the Afghan troops without any sort of deadline or timetable. Everyone, except for the Taliban and Steve Bannon, the ousted chief strategist, have welcomed the Trump speech. Nato is delighted even though most of its members will do zilch to back Trump with more of their own troops, the Kabul government is hugely relieved, having believed what they read in the US newspapers that Trump was considering total withdrawal, and most analysts are saying, well done Trump...for once. This doesn't mean that Trump will now sing and dance through the rest of his presidency, with everyone waving flags, but it's a positive step which won't do him any harm and might keep the angry antis quiet for a bit. But not Bannon, I suspect. He hated the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan, and told Trump to stick by his promise in the election campaign to get the hell out of Afghanistan. But that was when he was in the White Huse - just a few days ago. Now he's on the outside he can vent his wrath but it won't have the same impact. How he must hate General John Kelly, the chief of staff who got rid of him and helped persuade the president to stick with Afghanistan. It's a real coup by the generals in and out of the White House. They will all be on his side now and will do their best to make the new strategy work. I thought the remark by Trump when he said being in the Oval Office was very different from standing on a soap box pontificating about what he was going to do when he became president. Yessir, the awesoness of the Oval Office does tend to make you think before you speak, although not always in Trump's case.