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The Unfortunate Legacy of George W. Bush
On Saturday President Trump sent out a series of tweets that acknowledged that he had planned to meet this past weekend at Camp David with the leaders of the Taliban and the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, to engage in peace talks. When it was rumored in the past that President Obama sought such talks, private citizen Trump was highly critical. Something has obviously changed his mind.
Wrote the President, “Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately canceled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?”
That great military mind, David French (did you know he served as a JAG lawyer in Iraq?), responded:
These kinds of tweets, cheering on the collapse of talks, drew a response from former Ricochet editor Mollie Hemingway. “Disappointing,’ she wrote, “if unsurprising, to watch the swamp seek to extend the War in Afghanistan, which is nearing its 18th – 18th! – anniversary.”
We will soon see young men and women enter boot camp for our armed forces who will be asked to fight in a war initiated before they were even born. They will be asked to fight, perchance to die, but even after 18 years they will not be asked to win it. Because those who refuse to negotiate are the same people that also refuse to define victory.
In August 2017, French praised Trump as learning on the job that there were to be “no more Saigons.” And he also wrote, “As should be obvious by now, when fighting a militaristic theological movement conventional military ‘victory’ simply isn’t attainable. While there may be political settlements in given regions at given times, there won’t be a USS Missouri moment with al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any successor jihadist group.”
Was it only obvious two years ago? Or should it not also have been seen and clearly articulated 16 years before that? And how do you achieve French’s suggested “political settlement” if there is never, ever, ever to be negotiations?
Americans, unlike their European ancestors, have never sought empire. If we could state the nation’s philosophy of military engagement, in a nutshell, it would probably be nothing more complicated than “Get in, kick ass, come home.”
There was not a man, woman or child in America that did not fully support George W. Bush in the days following 9/11. But his legacy seems to be that he doomed us to the curse of the endless war. We have had the burden of Empire thrust upon us whether we asked for it or not.
That’d be Murder To Watch.
Excellent cases in point. We’ve always had to make a deal with the devil down through the ages.
War did come to my friends. I knew several who fought in it.
Seriously, your comment is ridiculous.
Its rhetoric. Don’t read too much into it.
It is public sanction and discipline, not much different from what the left does to conservatives. He’s framing the moral high ground and informing them that such strong arm tactics get them the reverse of what they hoped for.
He should have public support on his side for framing the moral high ground that the other side has to live up to.
View it as theater, not in earnest.
For some people, perhaps. But to me there are different kinds of bad actors, and the minimum requirement should be an ability to adhere to the agreements, with the usual inspection-theater. When we signed nuke treaties with the Soviets there was a verification mechanism, means to detect cheating, etc., because there was a state with a government. Negotiating with the Taliban is like getting a promise from the wind.
What’s to discuss?
Unless, of course, the target audience is at home?
Doesn’t matter. French is a squish so feel free to micturate all over his service as you like – or, in the case of Ace over at Ace of Spades HQ, make jokes about how he can’t satisfy his wife.
FIFY.
@rgbact/@romanblichar:
Congratulations. This comment packs in the most ignorance, arrogance and snark I’ve ever seen in a single comment. Well done,; you’ve proved yourself to be epic.
There is a false assumption in this comment threat that President Trump did not understand who the Taliban are. He most certainly did understand that they are the dominant warlords, among other warlords, in significant portions of Afghanistan. T
As you may know, the “Bronze Star Medal” “combat” gambit is played by French’s wife in response to criticism. So, I’ll say it again:
And he even got a Bronze Star Medal (without “V” device or Purple Heart to match). That is, he got the same award as I did, for doing his job well in a designated combat zone.
Meanwhile, there have been significant concerns about the conduct and intent of JAG officers over the past 18 years, concerns that a portion of them were effectively waging lawfare against our military. On the other hand, I had the honor of serving in units with command judge advocates who well and truly served the interests of the command.
Do you think the Taliban will stop killing American soldiers in order to engage in talks re American withdrawal?
I admit I’m sceptical, because their whole ‘thing’ is to keep killing because killing means strength. What happens to them when they stop killing? When Afghans are not repeatedly reminded to be utterly terrified of them every moment?
Which sort of links to: one can ask the Taliban to guarantee that Afghan soil will not be used as a base by those targeting US interests, but can they deliver? That implies a higher degree of control than any of them have ever had, and likely ever will have.
Their ‘movement’ is by its nature not monolithic, but rather consists of multiple gangs, each led by a warlord family. None of these is allowed to get too strong by the others, with ISI playing a role here for its own agenda of keeping Afghanistan politically incoherent strategic depth and not much else – and as a consequence none of them can make this kind of guarantee with any credibility.
I don’t know if Trump knows this about the Taliban, but that’s why engaging in talks in hope of more than a photo op seems quixotic.
But also makes me think it might have been about the photo op? Perhaps he does know the Taliban and his goal is domestic perception and not a real foreign policy outcome? So….there’s also that. Not great options?
Exactly. This is one of many aspects why the war there is most like the Indian wars. The US rarely seemed to understand that tribes were not nations under one ruler. The same is true of radical Islam. They repeatedly extracted meaningless “treaties” that could not be expected to be complied with by either side. We still treat Indian tribes with far more deference than they ever merited.
Trump is simply following a western tradition of assuming that other people are as honorable or organized as we are.
It’s a universal tendency to assume other people are just like ourselves. And also that how we are is the acme of ‘how people should be’.
Somewhere there is a Taliban who is saying something similar about America, but from the other side of the looking glass.
Seems a real problem: if the “right-thinking people” don’t allow us to negotiate peace with an enemy, then how do you bring a conflict to a close?
I guess you don’t. Forever war it is, then.
How do you negotiate a peace unless you have an opponent who can make that peace? That’s the quandary in Afghanistan – there’s nobody to negotiate with in the first place.
You can look back to Roman times to see similar problems. Large tribe of Goths camps on the borders, are sent bribes to stay there, Romans think they’ve negotiated with the right tribe, or the strongest, but next tribe over has own agenda, and both tribes are getting pushed from behind by a different Gothic tribe who has entirely different motivations and politics.
That’s somewhat analogous to the situation in Afghanistan, with the main difference of course that the warring tribes are halfway around the world, and not on our own frontier.
Moderator Note:
ProfanityReminiscent of John [REDACTED] Kerry who took a typewriter into battle. And he has the hat! It is seared in his mind.
These jokes are crude, over-the-top and out of line. Easy to dismiss out of hand.
However, is there an underlying truth that shouldn’t be discarded out of hand?
Did Nellie Ohr of FusionGPS influence her husband Bruce in a negative and biased way?
Did Jill McCabe, democrat candidate for state senator of VA and friend of Terry McAuliffe and the Clintons, influence her husband Andrew in a negative and biased way?
Did Claire Underwood … oops, wrong example. Nevermind.
Does Washington Post contributor Nancy influence her husband David in a negative and biased way?
Ronald Reagan had a similar situation with communism. Years ago, I watched a terrific documentary that addressed the question of whether Reagan actually defeated communism in any significant way. (I think it was a twenty-five-year anniversary project of the fall of the Berlin Wall maybe.) I wish I could find it, and I will poke around the Internet later today to see if I can.
Edited: I cannot find it. Oh well. :-)
Yes. Which is essentially what happened here. As mentioned above, you can’t negotiate with a so-called leadership that can’t or won’t control its foot-soldiers. Which is why the meeting was cancelled.
But does that mean it’s never worth trying? Or that we try again at a later date when maybe these guys show a bit more seriousness?
Because to just say “Welp! We can’t negotiate with anyone, so I guess we’ll just send more soldiers into the meat grinder until the end of time . . .” yeah, I can’t sign on to that.
John Kerry was a political opportunist, a weasel, probably a coward, and self-promoter, but he really was on a swift boat and was in real danger.
Perhaps you’re thinking of Al Gore?
Pull out, nuke ’em from space.
It’s always interesting to read various comments from the media and even here on Ricochet from those who claim inside knowledge of what Trump knows or does not know. To think any president who is privy to the daily briefings he receives of security threats throughout the world does not know about the Taliban threat defies credulity.
Rep. Louis Gohmert was on the Mark Davis Show this morning, denouncing Bush43 and Obama’s policy of centralizing all formal power in Kabul, rather than creating a federal system compatible with Afghan reality and our own Constitution, which presidents and their policy teams all swear to defend. President Trump should force a change to the Afghan constitution, shifting election of governors and other regional officials to the regions, where they are now appointed by the president in Kabul. That would make the society more resilient, less vulnerable to a palace coup or sudden Taliban strike seizing all power.
I agree. Not only is it true that the only moral war is total war, but once we win the war, we are obliged to implement the Bill of Rights in the conquered country.
Not at all what I wrote or advocated. What we did was impose a Wilsonian centralized power constitution on a fragmented society with conflicting interests. We have a better shot of not having to go back sooner than later if we leave a local government system compatible with Afghan society and history.
I’m not sure it isn’t. Please clarify.
I edited the comment for clarity, thanks.
I think his goal is getting the US out of Afghanistan. I, for one, feel like I’m reliving the the last days of US troops in Vietnam. And I think we are going to get the same result. The RVN enjoyed some significant advantages over Afghanistan. They had a fighting chance, but they suffered under the delusion that our promises of support were redeemable. More than likely the decent interval for the Afghans will be much shorter.
An immature nation state, heavily dependent on American combat and logistics, won’t have much staying power when facing a highly organized criminal syndicate backed by a neighbor willing to go all in. Maybe our best course of action is massive distribution of small arms and ammunition to the general populace. Give local communities the wherewithal to combine and organize self defense forces.
Afghanistan is lost. We just haven’t had the graveside service.
I don’t agree at all that we have any responsibility to the people or government of Afghanistan. Our only legitimate purpose was to punish them.
I think it has been reprehensible that we established a government there that we became puppets to, allowing them to tell us what we could and could not do, demanding money from us and do nothing in our interests. (For instance, at Camp Leatherneck, they forbid us to build any schools or establish a safe water supply for the city growing outside the base. The corrupt Afghan government declared these people to be illegal squatters and forbid us to help them. So their kids remained ignorant and they drank the sewage water that drained from the camp.)
Afghanistan is not lost. We were never trying to find them.