In comments at the White House on Thursday, President Trump finally
addressed weeks of reports of peace negotiation in Afghanistan, saying
that if a peace deal is reached, he is willing to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan.
That’s a huge deal, and not just because the US has been occupying
Afghanistan since 2001. These comments came the same day that the Senate passed a non-binding resolution expressing opposition to leaving Afghanistan.
Indications are that a peace deal with the Taliban to cap off over 17
years of war is a very real possibility. The Taliban’s main demand is
for all foreign troops to leave Afghanistan, and would guarantee no ISIS
or al-Qaeda bases are allowed in Afghanistan.
While other officials have said a lot of other issues need to be sorted
out for a final deal to be reached, those are already the broad strokes
of a pact, and a reason to be optimistic that a negotiated settlement
could happen.
Awesome!
I’m still waiting on Syria, but OK.
So am I, Brockland. Trump should’ve ignored Bonkers Bolton and Pompous Pompass back in December and withdrew all US forces from Syria, as well as the first 7,000 from Afghanistan. Then, he should’ve fired those two traitors.
I firmly believe a peace deal will be made between the Afghan govt and the Taliban .. the Afghan troops haven’t been winning at all; so, they may as well stop fighting and work out a deal with the Taliban and tell all foreign troops to pack their bags and leave.
Pompeo and Bolton have been careful not to publicly fail. Mattis couldn’t deliver on Syria and Afghanistan; even before being triggered to resign, his cachet was done.
Bolton lost several life points against Erdogan, though. Pompeo has to keep NK alive or be the man who lost NK.
Great news from Trump and more proof that congress is a lost cause. Vote every one of them out, who voted to stop Trump from ending these wars, it’s really the only choice. Then support Tulsi Gabbard in the primaries or Rand if the Republicans primary Trump or if he doesn’t run again, etc.
We can’t just keep electing these warmongering assholes all the time. And the time is right now, to do it too. Trump got his base to accept getting out of the wars, he has shifted the national conversation (Overton Window) away from accepting them as impossible to get out of, he’s moved the Right (voters) to the center on intervention and this will in fact force the left to take an anti-war position. If the Republicans still had a far right wing warmonger running, the left could run another Hillary and pretend they are not backing the war party, but they can no longer do that and win. Just watch the primaries; After the debates anyone who says we have to stay in these wars will be gone.
When they can no longer get the majority of Republican voters to support endless war, the left itself can not be the party of war and win. (see Hillary) So the DNC will either cheat and steal the election like they did with Sanders and end up losing to Trump or they will run someone who promises less war than even Trump is making.
It’s not enough to just end the ground wars, the war on terror itself needs to end. But I do understand that in a very real way, the two are tied together. Without ending the ground wars the war on terror will never end, “They hate us because we are there” is more accurate than; They hate us Just Because. The drone war itself is self perpetuating, but that doesn’t mean that terrorism would end with the end of the drone war. It will take getting out of both the ground wars and the drone wars for the US to get to a place of normalcy again. Once that happens though and I believe it will, we can then make a much easier case for ending all the spying and the rest of that crap too.
Now having said that, make no mistake. Ending the ground wars is the first step to ending all of this and it’s a necessary first step towards ending the drone wars as well, keep in mind much of the drone strikes are in Pakistan against the Taliban and as such are really part of the war in Afghanistan.
For our next anti-war president we will have to fight for someone who will get us out of Africa and all the other places we have decided to stick our noses in. But one step at a time and ending these ground wars is good place to start, possibly the only real place to start if you think about it, because the rest surely follows from these ground wars.
At best, support individual politicians who vote against war, but ditch the Democrats and vote Trump. If nothing else, he can be responsible for setting back the worse half of the war machine.