Because the consensus of state/ruling class/power elite opinion said so. Duh?

The real issue here is the intramural rivalry within the global-capitalist empire, with the Eastern axis, especially China, but also Russia and Iran, wanting to develop Afghanistan for the BRICS, while the Western axis wants to retain Afghanistan for itself.

As I have said all along, Trump is a Nixon-Rockefeller moderate Republican, who takes his foreign policy cues from Kissinger, and not a “Nazi,” “fascist,” “Alt-Right,” or even “Alt-Lite.” What this shows is that presidential politics is a waste of time, and that sensible people need to forget all about this Red/Blue nonsense just as they need to forget about the Nazi/Antifa nonsense.

Putin seems to me to wish to create a Eurasian alliance against the Atlanticist axis with what would amount to a restored Russian empire as the leadership of an Eastern axis of this kind. It’s essentially happening in the form of the growing relationship between the BRICS, the Shia block and the Global South. Putin is pretty much following the National-Bolshevik playbook, even if he doesn’t call it that, with Alexander Dugin playing the role of the Russian Kissinger. I wrote about the possibility of such a development in the early to mid 2000s and it seems to be happening at present, This is beneficial because it creates an intramural rift and accelerated division in the global capitalist empire led by the G20.  Just as it is a desirable state of affairs for the domestic regime to be divided into the Red and Blue Teams, thereby limiting the maneuverability of the state, so is is desired for the global plutocracy to be divided into the Western axis and Eastern axis.

By Maxwell Tani

Business Insider

After repeatedly criticizing the war in Afghanistan for years, President Donald Trump in a primetime speech Monday night said he was increasing the US military presence in the country.

In an address to military members in Virginia, Trump said he sympathized with Americans who were “weary of war without victory” and said he shared “the American people’s frustration” with a “foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and most importantly lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image.”

He also acknowledged the reversal in his decision to increase the American troop presence in a country he had previously called for the US to exit.

“My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts, but all of my life I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office,” Trump said.