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Comes now Trump’s Monday night Afghanistan backward handspring: “The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. … A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill … The security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense.”

Ta-da, the Trump policy: Stay in Afghanistan, up the ante with more troops, but if asked, don’t tell how many or for how long. And add a rhetorical flourish: “I’m a problem-solver. …We will win.”

Nothing new here, folks.

Trump even took a page out of former president Barack Obama’s playbook to debut his policy. Obama chose an assembly of West Point cadets in December 2009 to announce his escalation of the Afghanistan war effort. Trump stayed closer to home, using as a backdrop a military gathering at Fort Myer in Arlington.

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Trump’s message, however, stripped and unadorned, was just about the same as his predecessor’s.

Obama served up the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan as “the epicenter of violent extremism” and an enduring test for the United States. Trump, as did Obama before him, described the region in a similar way and adopted the Obama goal of denying al-Qaeda a haven, reversing the Taliban’s momentum and strengthening the capacity of Afghan security forces to defend and protect their own country.

Trump, as did Obama before him, heard the pleas of the rulers of Afghanistan: Just give us a little more time — along with your money and warm, well-armed American bodies –and one day down the road, we’ll be able to evolve into a corruption-free country with local chieftains and warlords joyfully helping us fend for ourselves — which we cannot now do. Obama fell for it. So has Trump.

Same old, same old.