This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 23rd, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President has laid out some of his plans for the war in

Afghanistan and doing so he suggests the United States should not engage in

nation building. The nation building appears to be baked into his plans.

The Cato Institute's Trevor Thrall and Eric Gopner comment.

I think the two big takeaways is one, much of what he's recommending is a recycling or rehashing of pre-existing policies.

He seems to be opting for a military-centric kill the terrorist approach and that's been

tried and people such as General McChrystal

have expressed that that's a wanting strategy so here you have a special

operator in the form of General McChrystal who back in 2009 indicated that we have to be very careful

about how we target terrorists with lethal force lest we create more terrorists than we're

taking off the battlefield?

I think a second important thing from the speech

is just how difficult it is for the president at this point

to change course on U.S. foreign policy policy. Remember Trump is a guy who

criticized the mission in Afghanistan for years. Stop nation building in

Afghanistan. We never win. We're losing in Afghanistan. And then last night, he basically admitted,

well, you know, I said all these things,

but then I changed my mind after I really looked at it.

And, you know, on the one hand,

you hope your president has the guts to change his mind if he's wrong about something

...