Afghanistan: Trump’s Chamberlainian Peace Deal with the Taliban -The iPINIONS Journal

For the record, I’ve been declaring America’s war in Afghanistan a lost cause for nearly 15 years. This, because it has been patently clear for at least that long that this war is eerily reminiscent of Vietnam … in every unwinnable respect.

As I have noted on previous occasions, the titles to just a few of my commentaries chronicle and bemoan this fateful symmetry:

“Please Spare Us the al-Qaeda Obits!” December 5, 2005
“Meanwhile Over in Afghanistan: Snatching Defeat from Hands of Victory,” September 18, 2006
“Obama Saluting War Dead Will Be Defining Image of His Presidency,” October 30, 2009
“WikiLeaks on US War in Afghanistan,” July 27, 2010
“Afghanistan: How Many More US Soldiers Must Die for a Mistake?” September 19, 2012
“‘The Afghanistan Papers’: US Officials Have Always Known This War Is Unwinnable,” December 11, 2019

More to the point, in “Obama Saluting War Dead … Again,” August 10, 2011, here is how I put this casus belli into context and posed a divine sign that America should cut its losses:

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I was just as happy as any critic of the war in Afghanistan could be when “Obama got Osama.” But even back then I felt constrained to temper the prevailing jingoistic triumphalism as follows:

As victories go, this one is pyrrhic at best. After all, almost as many American lives were lost prosecuting this war as those that were lost on 9/11. What’s more, tens of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan were killed as collateral damage and over one trillion dollars were spent just to arrive at this point.

(“Obama Gets Osama,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 3, 2011)

[K]illing Osama did nothing to change my informed view that, instead of escalating this war, Obama should have ended it:

Unfortunately, this means that troops are bound to be returning home in body bags throughout his entire presidency. Because, frankly, given the military quagmire Afghanistan has become, sending 20 (or even 40) thousand additional troops amounts to the proverbial tossing of a 50-foot life line to a man drowning 100 feet away.

(“Obama Saluting War Dead Will Be Defining Image of His Presidency,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 30, 2009)

Sadly, my foreboding view of this war came home to roost in spectacular fashion today when Taliban and al-Qaeda forces shot a US helicopter from the sky over Afghanistan, killing 30 US soldiers.

The nation should mourn the loss of any soldier. But there’s no denying the poignancy inherent in knowing that those killed in this attack were from the same elite Seal Team 6 that got bin Laden. Because the psychological blow this tragedy inflicts smacks so much of revenge for the psychological boost that triumph instilled. What’s more, there’s no denying this untenable juxtaposition: It took the US military 10 years to avenge the killing of 3,000 on 9/11 by killing bin Laden. It took the Taliban and al-Qaeda only 10 weeks to avenge the killing of bin Laden by killing these celebrated Navy Seals. …

What’s more, nothing vindicates my admonition quite like the fact that this episode represents the deadliest single day in this infernal 10-year war. And the fateful irony is not lost on me that this happened not on the watch of the war-mongering President George W. Bush, but on that of the putatively peacemaking President Barack Obama. …

If all of this does not constitute a divine sign that Obama should declare victory and get the hell out of Afghanistan, then there is no God!

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But I hasten to note that I only began invoking signs from God after years of pragmatic pleadings to no avail. Case in point:

The US legacy in Afghanistan will be distinguished either by a terminally wounded national pride – as American forces beat a hasty retreat in defeat (following the Russian precedent), or by tens of thousands of American soldiers dying in Afghanistan’s ‘graveyard of empires’ – as they continue fighting this unwinnable war (following America’s own precedent in Vietnam). … And more troops only mean more sitting ducks for Taliban fighters.

Therefore, Obama would be well-advised to cut America’s losses and run ASAP, let the Afghans govern themselves however they like, and rely on Special Forces and aerial drones to ‘disrupt and dismantle’ Taliban and al-Qaeda operations there.

(“‘Without (or Even with) More Forces, Failure in Afghanistan Is Likely’,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 23, 2009)

Having shared all that, I never imagined in my weirdest dream that America would have a US president like Donald J. Trump — who seems preternaturally disposed to do what I’d been pleading for all those years, namely:

Declare victory and get the hell of out of Afghanistan!

And, given the way President Trump attempted to end decades of nuclear hostilities with North Korea, I had cause to think he would follow through. After all, he not only declared victory without bothering to secure a comprehensive denuclearization deal, but even began publicly expressing his love for that country’s brutal dictator, Kim Jong-un. Hell, this is the guy who hailed four casino bankruptcies as masterstrokes in the Art of the Deal.

Yet, instead of effectively declaring bankruptcy on this war in Afghanistan and making a clean break, Trump is acting like a managing partner at FP1 Strategies, a top Republican political consulting firm. Only this explains him striking a peace deal with the Taliban that includes all kinds of unrealistic benchmarks. And everyone knows neither the United States nor the Taliban will be willing or able to meet most of them.

The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on Saturday that sets the stage to end America’s longest war [and] lays out a timetable for the final withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan. …

The war in Afghanistan in some ways echoes the American experience in Vietnam. In both, a superpower bet heavily on brute strength and the lives of its young, then walked away with seemingly little to show.

(The New York Times, February 29, 2020)

This deal’s most glaring flaw stems from the incompetence and arrogance of Trump committing the Afghan government to a mass prisoner release only to have the Afghan president object.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani objected to arrangements within the deal that would see the Afghan government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a condition for direct talks between the armed group and the government. …

The Taliban had long refused to sit down with the Afghan government, calling it a ‘puppet regime’.

(CNN, March 1, 2020)

Mind you, this is the same Trump who led the chorus of Republicans in denouncing President Obama as a “reckless” appeaser for releasing 5 Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay in 2014. But good luck finding any Republican daring enough to sing out of tune with those now hailing Trump as a Christ-like savior for attempting to release 5000 Taliban prisoners from Afghan jails.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Obama negotiated that release in exchange for the release of a US prisoner of war, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, from Taliban captivity. Because you’d think this fact would’ve tempered criticisms from Republicans who used to champion patriotism and support for US troops with as much fervor as they proselytized their Christian fundamentalism. I duly damned their hypocrisy in “Prisoner Swap: 1 American (Bowe Bergdahl) for 5 Taliban?” June 3, 2014.

Except that this was just one illustration of how Republicans’ Klan-like hatred of Obama precluded them from supporting him just as surely as their cult-like worship of Trump precludes them from criticizing him. But I digress …

Meanwhile, far from negotiating a peace deal, Trump seems to have laid the ground work for a civil war. Indeed, not since Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 has a purported peace accord seemed drafted to trigger war. But surely deal making 101 would have had Trump secure agreement on all terms with his partner Ghani before negotiating with the Taliban, no?

Trump insists that, despite having more holes than Swiss cheese, this deal furthers America’s interests. But you’d do well to juxtapose this peace deal he struck with the Taliban with the nuclear deal Obama struck with Iran.

Most world leaders agreed that Obama’s deal was comprehensive and wholly verifiable. More importantly, UN inspectors continually affirmed Iran’s compliance in spirit and to the letter. Yet Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from that nuclear deal because he insisted it was not in America’s interest. How’s that for having it completely ass backwards!

Again, I’ve been telegraphing and warning about this fateful symmetry between Afghanistan and Vietnam for the past 15 years. But the proverbial point of no return came when Obama failed to declare victory and order the honorable withdrawal of US troops in 2009. Because, from that point on, I knew this war would continue only to end in tragic, costly, and humiliating fashion, proving unprecedented in each respect.

Sure enough, here we are. The signing of the Paris Peace Accords signaled the end of the war in Vietnam. The last US troops left that country within two months. Likewise, the signing of the Doha Peace Accords signals the end of the war in Afghanistan. Yet thousands of US troops will be languishing in that country for 14 months.

Not to mention the hypocrisy inherent in Trump giving the Taliban an exact date for withdrawal. After all, he spent much of Obama’s presidency ridiculing him for “telling the enemy everything you want to do” – as a report in the October 4, 2016, edition of Slate documented. As things stand, all the Taliban jihadists have to do now is lie in wait for 14 months until the last US troops leave Afghanistan to complete their manifest destiny:

The Taliban by some estimates holds more territory than at any point since it was ousted following the 2001 invasion. Some analysts believe a full US withdrawal could unleash a repeat of the brutal civil war and Taliban rule that followed the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

(Financial Times, August 19, 2019)

Whatever the case, I see no point in writing any more commentaries on this quagmire of folly. I shall just end this one with the following points:

During a press conference at the White House on Saturday, Trump hailed this promise he claims Taliban leaders made: “They will be killing terrorists. They will be killing some very bad people. They will keep that fight going.”
Unfortunately, the only people the Taliban will consider terrorists are the US soldiers Trump plans to leave behind to continue propping up the Afghan government, as well as the US-backed Afghan soldiers they’ve been training in vain for nearly two decades to defend the country. Anyone who knows anything about this war knows this. But the Taliban can be forgiven for dismissing Trump as a joker for premising America’s surrender at Doha on it cutting ties with al-Qaeda. After all, this is truly as laughable as Jefferson Davis premising the South’s surrender at Appomattox on Abraham Lincoln allowing slavery not just to continue in the South but to expand into new states.
Most pundits criticized Trump for abandoning the Syrian Kurds in their fight against the dictator Bashir al-Assad. But he justified doing so by claiming that the US had already done enough for them. Given that, he would appear to have just cause to abandon the Afghans in their fight against the Taliban terrorist group; this, after 20 years, $2 trillion spent, and 3,500 US and coalition forces killed. Yet, instead of allowing US troops to “withdraw honorably,” his deal lays out a phased withdrawal, leaving thousands of them in the same military purgatory they’ve been in for years. Nothing betrays this untenable prospect quite like the chief American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, framing the deal from the outset with this bit of sophistry:

[T]he United States was pursuing ‘a peace agreement not a withdrawal agreement; a peace agreement that enables withdrawal.’

(Radio Free Europe, August 3, 2019)

Behind the scenes at the signing of this deal in Doha, Qatar, Taliban leaders were reportedly celebrating victory unabashedly over “the defeat of the arrogance of the White House in the face of the white turban.” A clearly humiliated US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was fuming. But all the usually preening, pompous Pompeo could do was to publicly entreat the Taliban to “moderate their celebration.”

How dumb is all that!

Incidentally, lest you forget, the US mission in Afghanistan was to build a country that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. But Army veteran and military historian Andrew Bacevich threw its mission failure into stark relief on yesterday’s edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS.

Interestingly enough, he began by acknowledging that Taliban leaders are on the cusp of accomplishing their mission of running US and coalition forces out of their country. Then he conceded that the United States has failed in Afghanistan in every respect. He even cited its failure to curb the production and trafficking of opium, which is the source of as much corruption in Afghanistan as the production and trafficking of cocaine ever was in Columbia.

Ultimately, though, this is just the latest example of the truth and consequences of Trump’s infamous deal making. Except that he struck this one with the terrorists who helped Osama bin Laden perpetrate 9/11 and still treat women like handmaidens. Now, in Trumpian fashion, Taliban leaders are boasting to the international media about the

Triumph of the White Turban over the White House!

Of course, the ironic brilliance of that branding will be lost on him. But it’s funny how the more Trump tries to make America great, the more he makes it a friggin’ laughingstock.