So yeah, a peace deal with the Taliban is stupid:
This would be the same ragtag gang of sharia-supremacists that harbored al-Qaeda — its enduring ally — while the terror network slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, the bloodiest attack by a foreign power on our homeland in American history. Worse even than Pearl Harbor.
The Taliban will soon be ruling Afghanistan again, just as it did in those years before 9/11. That is when al-Qaeda was encouraged to make Afghanistan the headquarters of its global anti-American jihad. In recent years, while we were fixated on ISIS, al-Qaeda became stronger, more resilient, and more battle-hardened. When the Taliban retakes control, al-Qaeda will be right back in business.
Lest we forget, its business is killing Americans.
It is not an endless war. Right now, after long effort that did involve heavy combat, we have local allies in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. But they need our support.
Support that is a relatively small burden compared to the effort America made to get us to this point. And we will abandon that effort and the casualties to pretend we have a peace deal and a decent interval before defeat?
And yeah, counting on building a modern democracy in Afghanistan when the local culture has proven to be too corrupt to create rule of law that is a vital component of democracy is foolish.
Before the first Obama surge I wrote:
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well [after a surge of troops], will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).
Having a democracy is not the measure of victory. Not having a jihadi sanctuary there is the proper measure of victory. I will not forgive Trump if he loses this war and renews the al Qaeda threat to America by granting them a sanctuary. It is a war we won against a Taliban government that hosted and shielded al Qaeda. We just need to win the peace with a friendly government fighting the Taliban insurgents and denying al Qaeda and ISIL a sanctuary.
If we lose this war after two decades of fighting, how much longer will we have to fight the next war with jihadi fanatics who will point to patiently fighting and dying for twenty years in Afghanistan to prove they are faithful before Allah granted them victory?
If the Democrats could get their act together and not nominate a socialist, hateful, and insane idiot, I could easily bank one term of Trump's accomplishments and turn away from him over this defeat.
But what are the odds of the Democrats doing that?
On the bright side, if Trump decides to lose the war, Democrats will suddenly remember Afghanistan is the good war and suggest nuking Taliban base areas to crush them once and for all and make every jihadi a good (dead) jihadi.
God, I hate our political choices.
UPDATE: Related information.
