Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Talibonkers

Donald Trump made a smart decision this past week, but of course any smart decision Trump makes is more by accident than by design, and the accident that prompts it is usually a disaster of his own making.
Trump had allowed American diplomats to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan in an attempt to get U.S. troops out of the country that has ended many an empire (we're next).  The Afghan government objected to Trump's gambit, fearing that it would be shortchanged.  But after the Taliban bombed an American installation, Trump said he was canceling not only talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan but also talks with Taliban leaders at Camp David that were to be secret . . . until Trump let the secret out.
Let me let you in on a secret: Trump gets no points for his smart decision because he should never have made the dumb decision of inviting the Taliban to Camp David in the first place.  Trump probably had delusions of grandeur by achieving the same sort of foreign-policy coup that Bill Clinton (Trump is obsessed with all things Clinton) had when he got PLO leader Yasser Arafat to come to America to negotiate peace with Israeli Prime Minister Yihtzak Rabin.  But the idea of having the guys who gave shelter to Osama bin Laden to plan his attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - and for all this to come out around 9/11! - is so boneheaded that I needn't say any more.  Except to say that Arafat, once deemed a terrorist, never perpetrated an attack on Americans - indeed, 9/11 sickened him.  On September 11, 2001, when I was stranded in a railway station in Wilmington, Delaware, someone said to me that Arafat was a good man who couldn't control the radical elements under his leadership.  Somehow, I couldn't imagine anyone saying that about the Taliban chieftains.
The only good thing that came out of this is that John Bolton has been fired as national security adviser.  Now there won't be a war with Iran.  Don't expect Trump to answer for his blundering; he'll find another shiny object to distract us. 

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