To convince Trump that Afghanistan was not lost cause, McMaster showed him 1972 photo of Afghan women in miniskirts. https://t.co/wRpwYoawjA [1] pic.twitter.com/rX7S2jEJfA [2]

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) August 22, 2017 [3]

On Aug. 21, while many were still reveling in the afterglow of the national event that was the solar eclipse, the president of the United States decided it was high time to address one of the most controversial subjects of 21st century America: the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan [4]. And while President Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of exiting the long-occupied country right away, in his teleprompter-guided national address, he detailed a plan to do the exact opposite — and there's a very Trump-ian reason.

The conflict in Afghanistan is our country's longest-running war, and it's one that has never had a clear end in sight. There's no way to pull out of the country without creating a vacuum where ISIS and Al-Qaeda immediately rise to power, effectively removing the ability to "win" the war in any traditional sense of the word. Both former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush struggled to come up with a strategy to minimize the loss of life and sunk costs of the continued conflict, but neither was able to come up with a solution that made a real, tangible difference. So despite Trump's claims that he plans to win in Afghanistan, it's likely that the status quo will just continue on as it has for the last 16 years [5] with minimal troop increases to maintain a continued presence in the country.

In his remarks, Trump attributed the change of heart to a more educated view of what was going on in Afghanistan. "My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts, but all my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office," he said, adding that he "studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle." New reporting from The Washington Post [6], however, suggests that there was an altogether different motive behind the substantive change in the president's policy platform — and it comes in the form of a photo from the 1970s:

"One of the ways [H.R.] McMaster tried to persuade Trump to recommit to the effort was by convincing him that Afghanistan was not a hopeless place. He presented Trump with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return."

It's clear that Trump's inner circle is calling the shots now, knowing very well how to get him to do what they want. With the removal of Steve Bannon, an outspoken critic of intervention, they knew the time was right to change the previously rigid part of Trump's agenda. And it's not an unfamiliar situation; instead, it's one that hearkens back to Bush and Dick Cheney and the initial start of the conflict we're still talking about today. A deeper look, however, shows a more sinister side of the Trump White House, one in which a photo of pretty women in skirts can manipulate the president into changing his mind on something that ostensibly helped get him into the highest office in the country. And that's to say nothing of the fact that the idea of Western norms prevailing in all countries regardless of existing culture is something that Trump finds appealing.

While he may still be the same president with the same values, we saw a very different vision of his inner circle through this revealing detail and the speech he gave on Aug. 21. What that means for the country — and for all of us, the American people, who will bear out the consequences of any actions this White House chooses to take — remains to be seen.