Negotiations on getting US troops out of Afghanistan have a number of key issues, but the most complicated is shaping up to be the timeline for the US withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan.
The Pentagon’s current proposal is a five year drawdown. This has been
repeatedly broached by both sides, with various timelines from one year to five years considered. The Taliban is pushing hard to have this all done within a year.
Though the US seems to be okay in theory with withdrawing from
Afghanistan, officials also want to make it a very deliberate timeline,
so they can spin this as a resolution to the war, as opposed to the
military defeat that it realistically is.
It’s also not clear why a slower withdrawal would be any better for
this, as if anything it would keep the trickle of US troops back from
Afghanistan going a lot longer, and delay the post-war era.
Yes, hate to agree with the Taliban – but the US should be out in one year! Not a hazy five that gives the military-industrial-political web of evil time to spin it out to fit their narrative.
The customary vehicle for this to come about would be a “Status of (US) Forces Agreement” which contains a clause that all US armed forces and their supporting personnel must be out of Afghanistan by such-and-such a date. Such an agreement will have to be signed by our government and the government of Afghanistan, not by the Taliban. To become US law it does not have to be ratified by our Senate. Trump’s signature suffices.
The SOFA agreement which President Bush signed with Iraq in 2008 was somewhat different. It did not contain a specific date at which all of our troops should be out of Iraq but it contained an expiration date for the agreement with the possibility of a negotiated extension. When President Obama tried to negotiate an extension those negotiations floundered on the Iraqi demand that US personnel would have to stand trial in Iraqi courts for certain (not all) crimes committed by them off base. The Pentagon said no way. Hence President Obama was forced to remove all US troops and their equipment and their supporting personnel from Iraq which he did.
The current dishonest critics of Obama overlook the fact that when President Bush signed that SOF agreement with Iraq he did two things. He ended the war with Iraq and signaled to the UN that we now recognized Iraq as a sovereign nation no longer occupied by the United States of America.
If President Obama at any time had subsequently sent US troops back into Iraq without Iraqi consent we would have been at war with Iraq again. Currently that is a messy issue but I believe in the context of the document which Bush signed that we are currently legally at war with Iraq which the Congress, once again, has not approved.
I have a very simple explanation- the Pentagon and Deep State want to have troops in Afghanistan and Syria and no deal with North Korea to weaken Trump’s run in 2020.
If they can get in a different President, then all those initiatives will be reversed. And as Pat Buchanan points out, many votes came his way because he promised to get the US out of the Middle East and “get along” with Russia and China. NK was a bonus that caused buzz of a Peace Prize, also a big help in 2020.
Trump is a fool to allow this to go on. He is crumbling and being outwitted every step of the way.
Is he afraid of Bolton?
Or maybe you and Raimondo were dead wrong about Trump and you’re just too pigheaded to admit it. And you didn’t even include what he’s doing to Iran on Israel’s behalf. Or Venezuela.
Those deep-state, neocon excusers have used the deep-state, neocon diversion over-and-over-again to try to distract me from the fact that President Trump has the absolute power to demand “all US armed forces and their supporting personnel must be out of Afghanistan on January 1, 2020” and expect them to be out or else some “appointment and military heads” will roll.
And why not? President Trump has claimed repeatedly that he knows much better than his Generals and his cabinets what goes on in and what needs to be done with the Afghanistan war.
“Is he afraid of Bolton?” No, I do not think that he is afraid of John Bolton. I, think that he is afraid that Al Qaeda/ISIS or some successor organization will get lots of followers again who make lots of trouble in Afghanistan and may get support from the Taliban (1). That does not look good in future history books and may be bad for him in the 2020 elections.
Ever since Trump’s first campaign speech every one of his actions will now be pre-tested for the elections. President Trump knows that the results will be close hence that he cannot afford a major misstep.
(1) remember that he accuses President Obama of having “created” ISIS in Syria. Trump cannot afford a revival anywhere.
There are urgent reasons to stay in Afghanistan – weighty matters such as combat pay supplements for the troops over there and important service contracts for civilians. When your only industry is the military industry, you have to feed it.
Come on, folks, it takes time for Eric Prince and the CIA to set up a private army in Afghanistan to protect the opium trade. You have to transport all those “captured” ISIS and al-CIAda fighters from Syria up there and rearm them to fight the Taliban. The logistics of that are a real challenge being as how it has to be done covertly and all. It’ll take at least a couple of years.