Trump and his golf handicap

Trump has had enough. After accusing Obama of going on holiday all the time and playing too much golf, Trump is off for 17 days to do the same. Well I don't blame him. He must be sick to death of the White House. He allegedly called the White House a dump when he was last on a golf course. He denied it as he always does but it sounds accurate. He knows he has his general back in the office looking after the shop, so he's off to improve his handicap. Newspapers always think that August is a quiet month for news, and home and foreign desks scrabble around for stories to fill the pages. But that's a dangerous assumption. Things DO happen in August. Take 1990. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. My August that year was certainly ruined by the Iraqi dictator's decision. He probably chose August because he knew the White House would be in sleep mode. So Trump will never be able to relax totally. Kim Jong-un probably has a scheme up his sleeve to ruin Trump's holiday, perhaps Putin too, although he'll want to be riding his horses or white-water rafting or whatever macho thing he likes to do on his hols. Trump's 17 days will give him time to think about Afghanistan, although somehow I doubt he will focus too much attention to it. Trump is fed up with America's military engagement in Afghanistan and he is absolutely right. After nearly 17 years, the US-led coalition is not winning. And there is no prospect of them winning, alhough victory in this sort of war is pretty well impossible. The Taleban will never go away. So people in the White House and the big shots in the Pentagon should be honest with the president. "Mr President, to be honest, we're never going to really win in Afghanistan, because however many troops we have here and however much money we spend, the Afghan security forces are never going to be able to defeat the Taleban." So may be THIS is the answer: bring all the training and advising teams back home, replace them with private contractors on the lines of the scheme offered by former Blackwater chief Erik Prince, and then boost the number of US special operations troops in Afghanistan from the current 1,500 or so to, say, 3,500, to focus on killing missions aganst al-Qaeda and Isis. They are the real threat to the homeland of the United States, not the Taleban. That's what I would do. But, of couse, Prince, a former Navy Seal, is a controversial figure because of Blackwater's heavy hand in Iraq during the Sunni insurgency period. But Prince knows his stuff, it'll cost a lot of money to bring him in, but it'll cost a lot of money to send another 3,900 troops to Afghanistan, as suggested by the Pentagon. There is little point in sending 3,900 more troops, as I have argued in previous blogs. It won't make sufficient difference. So go with Prince, as Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner are recommending, even though neither of them have any experience of military matters, and send in the Green Berets, Rangers and Navy Seals to give al-Qaeda and Isis a hard time. But, sorry, Mr President, you're on holiday. You need your time off like everyone else. Just come back full of good ideas in 17 days.