It looks like complete American withdrawal won’t come any time soon.
A new withdrawal plan has reportedly been designed especially for Trump, and it removes our troops over a 3-5 year period of time:
NY TIMES – All American troops would withdraw from Afghanistan over the next three to five years under a new Pentagon plan being offered in peace negotiations that could lead to a government in Kabul that shares power with the Taliban.
The rest of the international force in Afghanistan would leave at the same time, after having mixed success in stabilizing the country since 2001. The plan is being discussed with European allies and was devised, in part, to appeal to President Trump, who has long expressed skepticism of enduring American roles in wars overseas.
The plan calls for cutting by half, in coming months, the 14,000 American troops currently in Afghanistan. It would task the 8,600 European and Australian troops with training the Afghan military — a focus of the NATO mission for more than a decade — and largely shift American operations to counterterrorism strikes.
Various elements of the plan were shared with The New York Times by more than a half dozen current and former American and European officials. It intends to help talks with the Taliban that are being led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the American special envoy.
So far, the plan has been met with broad acceptance in Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels. But American officials warned that Mr. Trump could upend the new plan at any time.
And officials said that even if the peace talks broke down, the United States would go forward with shifting to counterterrorism missions from training Afghan forces.
Until the final withdrawal, several thousand American forces would continue strikes against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, including on partnered raids with Afghan commandos. The counterterrorism missions, and the military’s dwindling presence, are also critical to allowing the C.I.A. to operate in Afghanistan.
I guess the longevity of withdrawal is stifle criticism that our enemies will just wait out the withdrawal of our troops.
I do think it sounds kinda crazy that a new government in Kabul will share power with a heinous terrorist group like the Taliban. But regardless of what happens with that, I think it’s the right decision to pull out of Afghanistan.
For years, as we’ve all watched soldier after soldier die at the hands of a suicide bomber, I’ve wondered what is the point of our presence in the country. Stabilizing Afghanistan seems to be a very costly endeavor and I’m not even sure it’s possible. We saw what happened with Iraq after we left. It quickly destabilized, and I expect that Afghanistan will go the same route.
I think our best bet for countries like Afghanistan is just to keep counterintelligence operations going on. In other words, when they step out of line or are about to, bomb them to smithereens and let them pick up the pieces. It’s not a great solution, but other than Jesus coming back and making them Christian nations, I don’t know of a better solution.