MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” namesake Joe Scarborough broke down President Trump’s Monday night address to the nation regarding the future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan this morning.
“There are a lot of us … a lot of conservatives that saw the withdrawal from Iraq as a good thing,” Scarborough said. “After a decade of war, a lot of us, and I include myself here, said, ‘Hey enough is enough. Are we going to be an occupying force in two countries for the next 30 years?’”
Scarborough continued: “And a lot of us learned a valuable lesson after Iraq. That suddenly, I stopped saying, when I went out giving speeches ‘we’re spending two billion dollars a week in Afghanistan lets spend that money rebuilding America.’ Well guess what? Sometimes we don’t have easy options and Donald Trump ran head-on into that last night.”
Trump’s speech was praised by many conservatives and foreign policy experts, but ripped by critics who didn’t think he actually said anything.
“Morning Joe” guest Noah Rothman noted that the last three presidents have run on “retrenchment” but abandoned the strategy after some time in the Oval Office.
“It’s not easy to tell the American people that we are obligated just about everywhere in the world,” Rothman said.
Scarborough went on to say that America might need to keep troops in Afghanistan to “stabilize” the situation. Rothman believes that Trump was “very honest” regarding the nature of the threat posed by Pakistan, but didn’t talk about Iran or Russia.
“We have a great game in Afghanistan that we are only just beginning to acknowledge that we’re playing,” he said.
Check out the video above.