The author has a pretty shallow answer to what the goal was.
In my mind, it’s an Occam’s razor kind of thing:
1. He wants to empty Guantanamo and that gave him cover.
2. It happened the same day as his decision to gut the coal industry with CO2 standards, so that was the one thing that was pushed off the discussion cycle.
3. It has kicked the VA off the front page.
So, 3 reasons that make more sense to me than “they want to establish a stable future for Afghanistan.”
The only future of Azzaghanistan that the Taliban are interested in is getting back to thowing acid on school girls.
Politics aside, to talk about a peaceful Afghanistan without mentioning drug cultivation and drug traffic, is childish.
That kid getting released is just a pretext to cover some OTHER transaction which is much more insidious.
“O” knew there’d be objections to this but for what ever reason, he must feel it is worth the trouble, in the end.
Think about something ELSE even MORE objectionable and illicit... c’mon you KNOW he's capable of it.
I have seen this story before - 70 years ago to be exact!
The Democratic Administration of President Johnson did all kinds of political maneuvering and signal sending to get the North Vietnamese Government to make meaningful steps towards settling the conflict in Vietnam.
In the 1964 Presidential Campaign Goldwater was slammed by the Democrats and their media supporters for proposing a “purely military” solution to Vietnam. Well, guess what folks, 9 years later President Nixon executed a “purely military” solution to get the North Vietnamese back to the peace conference table - an operation called LINEBACKER and LINEBACKER II.
IMHO, the democrats were responsible for most of the 58,000 Americans KIA and I don’t know how many thousands of Vietnamese, North and South killed 1964 - 1972.
Is there anyone out there foolish enough to think this latest Democratic posturing is going to have a better outcome than their efforts in the 1960s?
“Peace in our time.” — Neville Chamberlain
The real goal was to strengthen the Taliban so that they could further weaken the US military by killing as many of the “psychopaths” who fight for us as possible. No doubt the last 10,000 or so sitting ducks left as we abandon Afghanistan will be some of our best, most experienced troops.