Trumps worst deal

Fresno CA

Description

So many of Trump’s actions as commander in chief were spectacular failures. The seizure of Afghanistan by the Taliban last year was one of Trump’s most disastrous foreign policy legacies. Biden certainly deserves blame for claiming that he was bound by Trump’s 2020 “peace” deal with the Taliban, which really was a “surrender agreement” to the Taliban in the mordant words of H.R. McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser. And Biden also deserves blame for the botched execution of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. But it was Trump, not Biden, who had laid the groundwork for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. In 2018 Trump authorized his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to begin negotiations with the Taliban, an effort that was led by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Khalilzad made an agreement with the Taliban that, in exchange for a total US withdrawal from Afghanistan, they would break with al-Qaeda and engage in genuine peace talks with the Afghan government. The Taliban simply ignored those agreements. Trump often asserted he was as a great deal maker, but his administration’s agreement with the Taliban was one of the worst deals in American diplomatic history. The Taliban received everything that they wanted without offering anything substantive in return, other than an agreement not to attack US forces as they withdrew from Afghanistan. Since the Taliban’s main goal in their negotiations with the US was a total American withdrawal, this was an easy concession for the Taliban to make.