Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday that the new administration will “thoroughly assess” the US-Taliban peace deal that was signed in February 2020.
The deal calls for a full US withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Spring of this year. The Trump administration left 2,500 troops and over 18,000 Pentagon contractors in the country for the Biden administration.
“We have to look carefully at what has actually been negotiated. I haven’t been privy to it yet,” Blinken said. “We must thoroughly assess the US-Taliban peace agreement, I still do not know the details of this agreement.”
The details of the deal that have been released to the public call for intra-Afghan talks between the US-backed government and the Taliban. The talks have been struggling but are still taking place in Doha. The Taliban also agreed to not allow groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS from gaining a foothold in Afghanistan, and pledged not to attack US forces.
It’s not clear if President Biden will go through with the complete withdrawal, and there are excuses he could find to stay, like the struggling talks and ongoing violence. He has previously said that he favors leaving a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan, something Blinken hinted at in his comments.
“We want to end this so-called forever war. We want to bring our forces home. We want to retain some capacity to deal with any resurgence of terrorism, which is what brought us there in the first place,” Blinken said.
re: the new administration will “thoroughly assess” the US-Taliban peace deal that was signed in February 2020.
The basic problem here is that these “deals” are made by one US administration and can then be nullified by another administration. They are deals and not treaties.
But international agreements ought to be considered treaties. Treaty — a formally concluded and ratified agreement between countries.That’s what other countries do.
When Bush-43 made an agreement with Iraq over the withdrawal of US troops, the Iraq parliament reviewed and approved of it. In the “democratic” US the Senate wasn’t allowed to see the agreement, and later Obama caught flack when he pulled out the troops because Iraq insisted on it.
The JCPOA agreement by Obama was similar. No Senate approval, so it’s easy to nullify. Just as Trump nullified the JCPOA, Biden may do the same with the Afghan agreement. It goes on, unconstitutionally. The Constitution provides that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” It isn’t done. The autocrats rule, while the important people keep repeating falsely that the US is a democracy. Baloney. It’s an autocracy, with one “administration” going one way, and another assessing it and then changing it. . . .The citizens were right to invade the Capitol, part of the swamp.
“The citizens were right to invade the Capitol”
For the right reasons. Not to keep their King from having to relinquish his crown and replace those subjects that weren’t loyal to that King.
Maybe he’s sayin…if a drunk driver runs over a pedophile, he should get a medal. ;?)
The US just can’t admit that it lost a(nother) war, therefore the “assessment.” The many Afghan provinces controlled/contested by the people the US displaced twenty years ago, the Taliban, are shown here.
Pakistan has been the principal supporter of the Taliban, principally because India has an interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan justifiably fears an Indian presence there. Pakistan doesn’t want to become an Indian sandwich. General McChrystal revealed this problem to Obama back in 2009 but stupid is as stupid does.