October 28, 2019 Topic:
War Weary: U.S. Troops Are Ready to Leave Afghanistan
If the United States were engaged in a war of national survival, then it would be willing to accept the costs posed by counterinsurgent war. But Afghanistan is not a war of national survival.
by Charles V. Peña
Hopes that a peace settlement in Afghanistan would be reached were dashed when a Taliban attack in Kabul killed a U.S. soldier and eleven others on September 6. Less than two weeks later, two separate Taliban attacks killed forty-eight people on the same day, after which the Taliban killed twenty people with a truck bomb at a hospital in Qalat Ghilji city in southern Afghanistan.
There is every reason to think this sort of chaos will continue, but it should not delay the United States’ overdue exit from its longest running war. President Donald Trump called off peace talks with the Taliban following the September 6 at
tack, but he doesn’t need to negotiate a peace to make good on his campaign promise and bring U.S. troops home.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/war-weary-us-troops-are-ready-leave-afghanistan-91696
