FT:
Henry Kissinger said there should be a “decent interval” between the US’s 1975 withdrawal from Vietnam and the communist takeover. Saigon fell shortly after the last US helicopters had left. Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Trump’s Afghanistan envoy, is working on roughly the same script for Kabul. By excluding the Afghan government from peace talks with the Taliban, the US looks as though it is preparing to cut and run. That would turn Mr Khalilzad into a poor man’s Henry Kissinger.
Yet Mr Trump is only delivering on his promise to pull out of America’s “endless wars”. That is no mean feat. Since at least 2004, when the US occupation of Iraq began to fall apart, American sentiment has been strongly in favour of disengaging from all foreign wars. Carrying out that desire requires a level of cold bloodedness few presidents can sustain. It means abandoning your friends to the enemy. The temptation is to try to shore up the client regime before leaving. Barack Obama attempted that in Afghanistan with his 100,000-troop surge. George W Bush did the same in Iraq. Both failed.
Mr Trump, on the other hand, does not suffer from moral squeamishness. Just as he is preparing to leave Syria’s Kurds to their fate at Turkey’s hands, he is willing to risk sacrificing Kabul to the Taliban. The problem for Mr Trump’s critics is that they do not have any better ideas. Having spent $1tn, lost more than 2,400 US lives, and after 18 years of trying, Afghanistan is no more stable today than when America ousted the Taliban in 2001. More of the same would be throwing good money after bad. It is nevertheless what the Pentagon always advises. It would be facile to blame Mr Trump for ignoring them.
The Vietnam parallel is stark. Then, like now, the US excluded its ally from the talks. Mr Kissinger called it “peace with honour”. The South Vietnam government did not see it that way. Mr Khalilzad has abandoned Washington’s pledge to conduct an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” process. It is all between him and the Taliban, which refuses to talk to the “puppet government” in Kabul. Then, like now, the insurgents controlled the countryside. Likewise, the US stepped up air strikes to improve its leverage. But Washington’s main aim in each case was plain: to exit with seemly haste. Mr Trump wants to pull out of Afghanistan before next year’s election. The proposed deal is simple: the Taliban will pledge not to host any terrorist attacks on America; the US, in turn, will bring its troops home.
Will history blame Mr Trump for cutting a deal with Islamists? Almost certainly. But the onus is on his critics to say what they would do differently
Go to link
“Will history blame Mr Trump for cutting a deal with Islamists? Almost certainly. But the onus is on his critics to say what they would do differently.”
Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Now Orlando’s Nightmare
“In 1977 Afghanistan was transforming itself into an enlightened, modern and democratic society. Eyewitness accounts from the 1960s and 1970s document the rapid changes embraced by Afghan men and women across a broad spectrum of society. Despite its poverty, Afghanistan had been independent in its foreign policy and self-sufficient in many areas, including food production; a vivid illustration of what life was like when Afghans were in control of their own state. It was also the year that Zbigniew Brzezinski stepped into the role as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Brzezinski was about to turn back the clock for the Afghan people by inaugurating a plan to lure the Soviet Union into an invasion of Afghanistan that was fulfilled on December 27th 1979. Now the blowback from Brzezinski’s scheme has delivered another dagger into the heart of America’s soul and the people of Orlando, Florida.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-fitzgerald/brzezinski-vision-to-lure_1_b_10511358.html
Reality is since World War II U.S hasn’t had a military victory and even then one can easily argue that had it not been for soviets doing a hard job of fighting Germans U.S may not have not won or the victory would have taken many more years to come! So the record is not good despite spending $700 billion a year on all sort of fancy products.
Bottom line is you cannot solve every crisis in the world by military intervention and dropping bombs. The only thing that can be done at this juncture is to provide guns to villages in Afghanistan for people to defend themselves against Taliban and Afghan army protecting handful of cities including the capital.
“Victory” has never been the objective. Islamofication of the states through permanent war, permanent tension and permanent chaos have been the policy objectives of the US in the region.