Posted on 08/30/2019 6:46:33 AM PDT by robowombat
Trump: US Troops Would Remain in Afghanistan After Deal with Taliban
By VOA News August 29, 2019
President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. plans to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan from 14,000 to 8,600 and then will determine further drawdowns.
Trump's comment came as a U.S. envoy continued talks with the Taliban to try to find a resolution to the nearly 18-year war. The president said the U.S. was "getting close" to making a deal, but that the outcome was uncertain.
"Who knows if it's going to happen?" Trump told Fox News Radio's The Brian Kilmeade Show.
No timeline
Trump did not offer a timeline for withdrawing troops. The Pentagon has been developing plans to withdraw as many as half of the 14,000 U.S. troops still there, but the Taliban want all U.S. and NATO forces withdrawn.
"We're going down to 8,600 and then we'll make a determination from there," Trump said, adding that the U.S. would have a "high intelligence" presence in Afghanistan going forward.
Trump has called Afghanistan – where the Taliban harbored members of the al-Qaida network responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States – the `"Harvard University of terror."
If terror groups ever attacked America from Afghanistan again, "we will come back with a force like they've never seen before," Trump said. But he added: "I don't see that happening."
The top U.S. military officer said Wednesday that it was too early to talk about a full American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters that any U.S. deal with the Taliban would be based on security conditions on the ground and that Afghan forces weren't yet able to secure the country without help from allied forces.
"I'm not using the 'withdraw' word right now," Dunford said. "It's our judgment that the Afghans need support to deal with the level of violence'' in the country today.
Afghanistan's government expects that U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad will soon update officials in Kabul on the progress of peace talks with the Taliban.
Attacks continue
A Taliban spokesman also has said that they're close to a final agreement. But even as the talks go on, there are persistent attacks by the Taliban across Afghanistan, and an affiliate of the Islamic State group has taken hold in the country and has been expanding its base.
Even if Khalilzad is able to close a deal, it will remain for the Afghan government to negotiate its own peace agreement with the Taliban. Part of those talks will be determining a role for the Taliban in governing a country that it ruled before U.S. forces invaded in October 2001.
We should maintain our one big airbase there as a staging ground, just in case Iran gets whackier.
To be continued to be killed by Afghan soldiers and the Taliban.
Seventy five years and no end to American troops stationed in Europe. Sixteen years in Afghanistan seems like nothing. Too bad modern politicians ignore George Washington’s famous advice to avoid foreign entanglements. He used the right word.
To be blown up into pieces thanks President Trump.
Agree - Bagram with a 40 sq/mi no-go zone around it.
Why leave the ragheads with that massive state-of-the-art airbase?
Getting bogged down in Afghanistan is a right of passage for modern Empires. British, Soviet, now American. We really should wrap this up so China can have a crack at it.
We should exploit all natural resources there before the Chicoms do. I disagree with Trump on not wanting to kill a lot of people in Afghanistan. I’m not talking civilians but if we had killed thousands of Taliban we would have been in a better spot. Don’t tell me that with the power that we have and an all out intensive but short campaign,we couldn’t have been out of there years ago. We only lack will and leadership. The Taliban are telling us that we have to leave first before peace. Insulting. MOAB and AC-130 that place THEN we talk.
Happems every time we send our boys off to war, and now girls. They bring so,e of it back with them. For a few, a lot of it. Doggone.
Trump ran on getting us out of foreign entanglements but as long as globalists like Linda Graham and John Bolton are calling the shots nothing will change.
Can’t bother reading past “deal with Taliban”.
We should have brought home our troops years ago.
Since the 1860’s when the Brits were there, no country has ever got all those different tribes to just settle down. And no country ever will. Just let them fight it out themselves. What has been gained with our military dead? Nothing!
Bears repeating:
To be continued to be killed by Afghan soldiers and the Taliban.
If this does not end I am not voting for Trump. I will pass.
Don’t be such a queen...
Trump is negotiating.
” The president said the U.S. was “getting close” to making a deal, but that the outcome was uncertain.
“Who knows if it’s going to happen?” Trump told Fox News Radio’s The Brian Kilmeade Show.
Re: 9 - And you’re basing that on... what, exactly?
I’ve known several military personnel that served in predominately Muslim areas. They were glad to get back to their families. I never heard any express more of a tolerance for Islam, or saw a change in their attitude like you suggest.
If anything, there was a frustration at Rules of Engagement that made fighting enemy personnel and holding contested areas problematic.
Every foreign war we've ever been in, to wit. And I've seen a lot of them starting with personal acquaintance of combat veterans of every one of them since World War One.
Integration with the culture you have to interact with, and usually on a one-on-one, eyeball-to-eyeball basis, whether hurting some ou helping others, they always bring part of it home with them, inevitably changing our own culture.
I understand your concern, but since the first attack on the World Trade Center and all that came afterward, has there not been a deep and exponential massive penetration of Mid-East adamantine unassimilatable Islamicists from coast to coast? And is not our toleration level peremitting them to impact any part of our heritage of which they are intolerant, to the point that our majority we must accommodate their uninvited minority presence with our culture being changed, an do theirs? Don't tell me that the return of Gulf-war, Bosnian, Somalian, and Iraq/Afghan veterans and civilian support do not weaken our resistance to unwanted changes.
Every foreign war we've ever been in, to wit. And I've seen a lot of them starting with personal acquaintance of combat veterans of every one of them since World War One.
Integration with the culture you have to interact with, and usually on a one-on-one, eyeball-to-eyeball basis, whether hurting some ou helping others, they always bring part of it home with them, inevitably changing our own culture.
I understand your concern, but since the first attack on the World Trade Center and all that came afterward, has there not been a deep and exponential massive penetration of Mid-East adamantine unassimilatable Islamicists from coast to coast? And is not our toleration level peremitting them to impact any part of our heritage of which they are intolerant, to the point that our majority we must accommodate their uninvited minority presence with our culture being changed, an do theirs? Don't tell me that the return of Gulf-war, Bosnian, Somalian, and Iraq/Afghan veterans and civilian support do not weaken our resistance to unwanted changes.
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