Trump Outsourcing Afghanistan Strategy To Business Friends
The New York Times reported that Trump administration has recruited businessmen to figure out what the White House should do in Afghanistan.
The two businessmen have previously profited from military contracting. Erik Prince is a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide and Stephen Feinberg is a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International.
Prince is also the same man who set up a secret backchannel meeting for Trump and Putin. And during the transition, Prince was quietly being snuck into Trump Tower through the back in order to avoid the media.
And these two men are tasked with devising alternatives to sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Where do you think their interests will lie?
According to the Times, these two men were hired “at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law.”
Bannon sought out Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to try to get a hearing for these ideas. According to White House officials, Mattis “listened politely but declined to include the outside strategies in a review of Afghanistan policy.”
