President Trump was to have met with leaders of the Taliban this weekend. The get together was to have occurred at Camp David. The goal was to finalize a deal under which the U.S. would effectively pull out of Afghanistan, leaving it to the Taliban’s tender mercies.
I agree with Rep. Liz Cheney who said:
Camp David is where America’s leaders met to plan our response after al Qaeda, supported by the Taliban, killed 3000 Americans on 9/11. No member of the Taliban should set foot there. Ever.
We certainly should not use Camp David to put the finishing touches on abandoning Afghanistan, where the first major portion of our response to 9/11 occurred. There are other venues where Trump can accomplish this, if that’s his desire. I hear he owns some nice hotels and golf courses.
But Trump’s meeting with the Taliban will not take place — not for a while, anyway. Trump cancelled it after the Taliban took responsibility for an attack last week that killed a U.S. soldier.
What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?
The Taliban would, of course. In doing so it hardly acted out of character. The Taliban has been killing indiscriminately for decades in its quest to gain, hold, and regain power.
Did Trump not understand this? What did he think the Taliban is, an agrarian reform group?
By the way, I don’t think the Taliban is killing people just to strengthen its bargaining position, although that would be sufficient reason for these odious terrorists to commit mass murder. The Taliban wants to be seen as driving the U.S. out of Afghanistan under extreme duress. It wants our exit to look more like Vietnam than Iraq (under President Obama).
By driving us out in this way, the Taliban can claim, correctly, to have avenged the victory we achieved under President Bush when we drove the Taliban from power. It can also claim to be the true successor to the various Afghan groups that have defeated invading powers down through the centuries.
It’s not surprising that President Trump doesn’t understand the Taliban. What’s surprising is that he has confessed his ignorance in a tweet.
STEVE adds: I’m largely in agreement here, and I think that I’d only approve of a Camp David meeting with the leadership of the Taliban if it was a ruse to divert a planeload of Taliban leaders to Gitmo.
Still, in fairness to Trump, Camp David is perhaps the only place where he could have a secret meeting with anybody. He couldn’t hold such a meeting at one of his hotels. The media and people in the vicinity would leak it out. Secret meetings with despicable people are not unknown, but they usually are held at some discrete location overseas and never involve the president. This is typical of Trump: he thinks he is indispensable to any deal. But this is not The Apprentice or a bank loan negotiation. I rather wish he would default to his ISIS position, and “bomb the s— out of them.”
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