Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in an interview with Fox News that aired on Saturday that the US will draw down its presence in Afghanistan to under 5,000 troops by the end of November.
“We’re going down to a number less than 5,000 by the end of November,” Esper said. Esper said the withdrawal is “conditions-based” and will only happen if the Pentagon feels it can carry on its mission in Afghanistan with a smaller troop presence.
In an interview with Axios last week, President Trump made a similar statement and said the US was going to have less than 5,000 troops in Afghanistan by Election Day.
Esper also spoke of the Afghan peace process and called it a “windy road.” The US-Taliban peace deal signed in February calls for a complete withdrawal of US forces if the Taliban lives up to its end of the agreement.
The peace deal requires the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a precondition for intra-Afghan talks. On Sunday, the Afghan government announced that it will release the remaining 400 Taliban prisoners it agreed to set free under the deal. The Taliban said they are ready to begin intra-Afghan talks once the prisoner release is complete, and those talks can start as early as next week.
5000=enough to insure opium production and distribution continues…funding CIA black sites, torture and subversion
+ who knows how many mercenaries
There are strings attached that will allow us to quick march more troops into Afghanistan.
Beach, beach, beach.
How convenient — by elections! Then — who cares.
It is actually cute how everyone is acting like it is all normal. As if we do not have a plague killing a person each minute. But those lives do not matter. And what will happen after all forms of give aways dry up, and jobs do not return. But the band keeps in playing on this Titanic. And the middle class — what is left if it — will pay the tab.
In the meantime, this president has sided with the big three — Google, Microsoft and Facebook — and and against Apple. By banning WeChat, Apple will lose potentially 1/3 of its sales and good chunk of revenue — as WeChat is used in China for e-commerce, payments, social media, news outlets, productivity tools. Basically, users in China will drop Apple devices, if this App is removed.
But the currency insurance is telling a story. It costs half as much for yuan as dollar and euro.
trump poorly comprehends the amerikan subconscious—mainichean, dualist, barbaric as Galtung writes. Bush achieved an approval rating of 90+% when USA invaded Iraq
It will be interesting how would the prevailing anti- imperial, antiwar mood of the country react to Trump starting war. He has betrayed so many of his voters, never made an attempt to broaden his voting base by tapping into clearly dim view of global interventions. He calibrated it by nurturing his die hard base that would follow him into any war he choses.
But this is all even more complicated by the wide spread belief of supremacy over others in any field we choose. It is based on a nearly science fiction belief of superior intelligence that can master any challenge by though process alone. We can invent anything, master any skill — by intellect alone. Dull scientific work is for drones, the nerds that need to be directed by superior will power. There has been too many such jumping to conclusions. Off shoring the industry took away the ground floor of observation and push for improvements that incrementally lead to major breakthroughs. This is a difference between Steve Jobs that had vision but knew how everything works, and modern corporate leadership with vision but no knowledge of reality. For that reason, for decades now — scientific, blue sky research, or any scientific work that takes time, has been derided. The drones just adapted to the expectations.
But how many paid Xe employees (formerly Blackwater), and how many others there, paid to guard the poppy fields for the CIA, to process their heroin, and how many there as CIA agents meant to stir up trouble and “justify” the return of soldiers in the near future? Honest questions that nobody will answer (or will be allowed to answer).