For all those pundits out there who were concerned that Trump wasn’t “presidential” enough to actually be President, I have some great news for you! This past week Trump wiped out any such fear by doing the most presidential thing that can possibly be imagined: continuing the never-ending war in Afghanistan!

That’s right, the longest war in the history of the United States is not coming to an end any time soon. And just in case you were still operating under the delusion that the current puppet figurehead was any different at all from any of the stuffed shirts who previously occupied the Oval Office, Trump is even copying Obama’s failed 2009 “surge” strategy to keep the whole charade going for another four (or eight or 12 or 200) years.

As Mark Perry notes in his article on the subject, quoting an unnamed Pentagon official who was privy to the deliberations on the plan:

“This Trump plan, at least so far as I understand it, sounds a lot like the kind of plan we’ve come up with again and again since the end of World War Two,” a senior Pentagon officer says. “We’re going to surge troops, reform the government we support and put pressure on our allies. In this building [the Pentagon] there’s a hell of a lot of skepticism. And that’s because we all know what this new strategy really means – and what it means is that the only way we can get out of Afghanistan is to get further in. You know, it seems to me that if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that that doesn’t work.”

Bah! Work shmirk. The point is that copying Obama’s failed “surge” strategy will look aggressive and manly and will pump even more of that Fed-issued fiat debt paper into the pockets of the Pentagon and their contractor buddies, so now Trump is officially “presidential” according to all the neocons on the right and the warmongers on the left.

Learn more about Trump’s warmongering and how it relates to his administration’s new “war on drugs” push in this week’s subscriber-only editorial. Also, sign in for the month’s subscriber-only video and James’ recommended reading and viewing.

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