Posted on 03/03/2020 10:43:36 AM PST by Maceman
Nothing illustrates the folly of our 18-year-long nation-building mission in Afghanistan better than the partial peace bought by a months-long negotiation breaking down after just 72 hours.
#BREAKING Taliban ends partial truce, to resume Afghan 'operations': spokesman
AFP also reports, "three killed, 11 injured in blast in east Afghanistan," so you know the Taliban wasn't kidding around. The "operation," as the Taliban likes to call it, or "savage terror attack," as any honest person would call it, was in response to confusion between the Trump White House and the Afghan central government over the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
The New York Times reported on Sunday:
The Trump administration’s blueprint for the peace talks included a provision that up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners “will be released” by the time the next round of negotiations, with the Afghan government, begin on March 10. Any remaining prisoners could be released over the following three months, according to the document. “The United States commits to completing this goal,” the document stated.
The first snags in the process were apparent less than 24 hours later.
But Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday that "There is no commitment to release the Taliban prisoners," and that doing so "can’t be a precondition" for continued peace talks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reminded Face the Nation yesterday morning that "There have been prisoner releases from both sides before; we have managed to figure our path forward," but maybe 5,000 was just too big a figure for Ghani to swallow.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
What I suspect (and this is only a hypothesis) is that President Trump has rickrolled the Taliban into proving his own point: mainly, that Afghanistan is a shithole country that is not worth so much as a pinprick of American blood or a penny of American treasure.
If we are going to pour a trillion dollars into a country, let's do so with Israel. They are the only nation in the region worth saving.
Beyond that, just get us the hell out of the Middle East, Mr. President.
Did anybody really expect the Taliban to comply?...................
Let the Taliban consolidate in Afghanistan after we pull out our troops then rain down holy terror upon their heads. First with the MOAB then with Hellfire missiles. And anything else we see fit to throw at them just north of stones.
But before we leave we should torch all the poppy fields.
We are leaving whether they continue to fight among themselves or not.
Trump says he had ‘good conversation’ with Taliban official
.............
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/485729-trump-confirms-good-conversation-with-taliban-leader
Looks to me like that part of the world is in a 100% permanently messed-up condition that they can’t seem to ever get straight & neither should the rest of the world even try to.
The U.S. had no business making any separate U.S.-Taliban deal to which the government of Afghanistan was not a party. Doing legitimizes the Taliban claim that the government of Afghanistan is illegitimate.
Torching only brings them back stronger... You mean we should salt the earth of the poppy fields.
Yes, Roman style.
Pakistan will someday pay for being Beijing’s stooge. Trump can lean on Xi who leans on Pakistan who lean on the Taliban. Phase II.
That being said, we're not in an 18-year war in Afghanistan. It's a lie. We accomplished all over are military objectives when Bin Laden was killed.
As Allen West points, the reason we are in and should stay in Afghanistan is to have a base of operation against Islamic terrorism.
Afghanistan is called the Graveyard of Empires for a reason. GTFO.
We need to get out as soon as possible.
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