What Did Charlottesville Teach the Taliban about Trump?

Monday Trump announced his bold new Afghanistan plan: it was the same as Obama's plan and Bush's plan, which he had roundly criticized. But with less nation building and more killing. Trump threatened and bragged, the way he always does.

But he did one thing that he rarely does: admit that he changed his mind.

My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts. But all my life, I have heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In other words, when you are president of the United States. So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle. After many meetings over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David with my cabinet and generals to complete our strategy. I arrived at three fundamental conclusion about America's core interests in Afghanistan.

Now, imagine that you're the Taliban. You've watched Donald Trump for seven months, whining, bragging, complaining, tweeting. He calls reality "fake news." He attacks Mitch McConnell for not getting legislation passed, but without whom Trump cannot get any legislation passed. He praises the GOP's health care plan, then calls it mean. He promises a giant wall on day one and seven months on there's nothing there.

And then Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan march in Charlottesville, killing a woman and hurting 19 others, and -- speaking from his gut -- he says that many sides were responsible for the violence. Two days later Trump condemns the violence in a statement his aides forced him to read. The next day he backslides and says there were some very fine people on the Nazis' side. Then he whines about how no one likes his perfect words, none of which he meant or believed.

What does that teach the Taliban? That Trump is not loyal to the people or the institutions of the United States, or even his own allies. He flip-flops. He cannot stick to the script. He brags and whines, and talks tough but has no follow through or ability to get the job done. He has an overweening pride, but he's morally weak and cannot abide criticism. He's flabby and physically weak: the Taliban spend their lives fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan; Trump can't even walk up a hill in Italy.

Given all these character weaknesses a PSYOP campaign against Trump could defeat the United States in Afghanistan. Trump's flaws are so obvious that even the Taliban can see how to manipulate him. Maybe it'll be the Russians, who have already been helping the Taliban, to use the same tactics they used to elect Trump to defeat him in Afghanistan. Or maybe it'll be Breitbart and Bannon, who know even more about Trump's weaknesses.

It's easy: plant fake news on various outlets, such as Fox News, to convince Trump that his gut was right. As Trump showed last week, he cannot maintain discipline for very long.

Trump won't say how many troops he's sending to Afghanistan. They're not supposed to fight, just train Afghans. But they're still exposed: dozens of Americans have already been killed by Taliban infiltrators posing as Afghan army.

How will it play to Trump when Fox News starts reporting that Afghan soldiers are murdering Americans who are there to help Afghans? How long will it take Trump to turn on our Afghan allies, as he turned on Mitch McConnell, Jeff Flake and other Republican senators he absolutely needs to pass his agenda?

How long will it take Trump to repudiate his own decision to stay in Afghanistan, which he himself admitted goes against his gut, once people start blaming Trump for the same things Trump blamed Bush and Obama for? Bannon and the Trump groupies will shout "Trump was right in the first place!" and "Let Trump be Trump! Out of Afghanistan!"

What will happen when Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller start leaking dirt on the people who convinced Trump to stay on in Afghanistan? Will Trump start rage-tweeting about his generals and his chief of staff, undercutting them in exactly the same way he undercut Mitch McConnell?

How long will Trump stick to the plan when Breitbart starts quoting polls that say Trump is losing support among his base because of his decision to stay in Afghanistan?

To the Taliban -- and pretty much everyone -- Trump appears weak and stupid, flighty and inconstant. Disloyal and undisciplined.

The United States has the most powerful military in the world (even though we can't seem to stop our destroyers from getting rammed by cargo ships). But we have the weakest commander in chief this nation has ever seen.