Mitch McConnell Is About To Doom One Of Trump's Attempts To 'End Endless War'
Last week, President Donald Trump bolstered his shaky reelection claims to being a peace candidate with a striking nomination for a key foreign policy job: He tapped William Ruger, a scholar who wants a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, to be the new American ambassador in Kabul. This week, Trump’s own party is set to doom his latest gambit to “end endless war.”
The Republican-led Senate will likely fail to advance Ruger’s nomination in the brief period left before the chamber adjourns until after the November election, according to people familiar with the situation. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must vote on Ruger before the full body does, has not scheduled a hearing for him and the chances it will do so are diminishing, though administration officials say they are still trying to put him on the committee’s calendar.
The whole situation highlights two big problems with the president’s attempt to convince voters that he will end unpopular American wars: Trump’s own incompetence and the GOP’s ideological muddle on national security.
Ruger is well-respected by many lawmakers and foreign policy analysts; bringing him onto Trump’s team didn’t have to be a reach. And Ruger’s presence would help Trump argue that he was challenging hawks who have traditionally dominated Washington policy-making by giving more power to people who advocate a more restrained approach internationally.
“Having somebody who has been firmly, clearly and publicly committed to withdrawal as soon as feasible and with very few preconditions, not withdrawal as some kind of aspiration ― that’s a big change,” said Gil Barndollar, a researcher at the Catholic University of America who is personally close to Ruger. (The Charles Koch Institute, where Ruger currently works, has funded projects that Barndollar has worked on.)
The Afghanistan ambassador job would give Ruger responsibility for helping to achieve one of Trump’s top priorities....
