What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he didn't want to kill ten million people, and then waited to be praised for saying so.

In a meeting with Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Trump was asked about the United States' continued involvement in Afghanistan. He responded:

I could win that war in a week. I just don't want to kill 10 million people. Does that make sense to you? I don't want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone. It would be over literally in ten days. And I don't want to do that, I don't want to go that route. 

There are fewer than 100,000 members of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and while they control large parts of the territory of the country, the only way to kill ten million people in the country in a short time would be a nuclear bombing campaign against urban areas controlled by the pro-U.S. government in Kabul. 

More to the point, there is no way that Trump has been presented with a military plan involving the massacre of millions of civilians, and there is no circumstance under which the U.S. military would carry out any such order.

Why should I care about this?

• You don't get any credit for saying that you could commit mass murder but haven't.

• The president casually speculating about murdering millions of civilians doesn't help the United States in any way.

• If Trump doesn't have a plan to win the war without mass murder, then he doesn't have a plan to end the war.