Over the weekend, Donald Trump blew up a meeting between the United States and the Taliban. The meeting was supposed to take place at Camp David. Max Boot writes:
It’s appalling that Trump would have even considered hosting Taliban leaders just days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks plotted by their ally, Osama bin Laden. Imagine what Trump — who excoriated President Barack Obama for negotiating with the Taliban — would have said if Obama had invited them for a sleepover.
But Trump's claim to fame has been that he's a dealmaker:
"Deals are my art form,” President Trump proclaimed in his ghostwritten book, “The Art of the Deal.” “Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals.” It’s true that Trump likes making deals. He’s just not very good at it. In fact, he may be the worst dealmaker ever to occupy the Oval Office. The abrupt disintegration of his accord with the Taliban provides the latest evidence that he’s too impetuous and ignorant to be a successful negotiator.
Consider his record on that score:
Instead of producing a deal with China, he has sparked an endless trade war. Instead of denuclearizing North Korea, he has allowed Pyongyang to test ballistic missiles and expand its nuclear arsenal while refusing to send envoys to negotiate. Instead of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, he has actually accelerated it. Instead of reaching the “deal of the century” between Palestinians and Israelis, his peace plan has still failed to materialize. Now Trump’s special envoy for Middle East peace has resigned, to be replaced by Jared Kushner’s 30-year-old gofer. And negotiations to get Mexico to pay for the border wall? Fuhgetaboutit. That’s being funded by the Pentagon, which is diverting funds needed to pay for child care for military families and to rehabilitate “high risk” facilities that pose a threat to workers.
Some claim to fame.
8 comments:
I don't believe Trump intended to meet Taliban leaders at all. The tip-off is that the meeting was supposed to happen at Camp David. BS. There's no way Trump would give up the huge profit and publicity of holding the meeting at one of his properties. This is an effort to change the channel away from his Sharpie fiasco.
Cap
What's remarkable about Trump, Cap, is that he does everything out in the open. It's all about the show. And he gets away with it.
.. Trump = rancid garbage ..
GOP = rancid garbage
Oh say can you see - by the dawn's early light.. ?
.. 'home of the brave .. and the bone spurs
It's strange how quickly those bone spurs disappeared, sal.
You would think by now the Gringos would have settled on a better means of dressing up a military defeat as a victory. The fact is they haven't won a war since Panama and Grenada. We no longer even grasp the distinction between victory and defeat.
The Americans and their NATO sidekicks set out to drive al Qaeda and their Taliban collaborators out of Afghanistan and make that country safe for democracy. How did that work out? Yet that is the objective on which they went to war and by which victory or defeat is to be assessed.
Some of us remember how the US exited South Vietnam and the parallels between Trump's engagement of the Taliban today and Nixon's dealings with the North Vietnamese some 45 years ago. In both cases there were rounds of peace talks. In both cases one party was not a participant - the government that Washington was supposedly backing. The "home team" was sidelined.
Nixon capitulated under the banner of "Peace With Honor" and achieved neither. The North allowed the Americans to di di mau and then rolled up the South in a glorious Communist reunification. The shame of defeat fell over the American nation and especially its military not to be lifted until Operation Desert Storm. Then, over time, it emerged the Commies weren't the baby-eating fiends they had been made out to be and today Washington and Ho Chi Minh City are on speaking terms.
America's defeat in Afghanistan won't be as tidy. All the West did was babysit a civil war on hiatus. Whereas Viet Nam was more or less homogeneous, Afghanistan remains an utter mess of ethnic, tribal and religious factions - Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Turkmen, Baloch, Uzbek, Nuristani, Persian, Arab and more.
Years ago a prominent US State Department staffer, possibly Peter Galbraith, testified before the Senate that there has never been a stable, modern state in the Muslim world that did not first overcome both tribalism and ethnic divisions. Those objectives are definitely not Trump's priority. He wants out. He wants to belatedly 'cut and run.'
It's hard to know just what Americans are willing to believe these days but America's adversaries in Afghanistan and the region won't be fooled.
Robert McNamara said that, among other things, the Americans lost in Vietnam because they never understood their enemy, Mound. Ditto in this case.
Did this guy ever get a repeat customer? I wonder what final insult he has in store for the great American public. He probably hasn't thought of it yet. Whatever it turns out to be, his many admirers are deserving of it. But of course, it won't matter much because they won't know it when it happens.
Courses in sales resistance should be taught in elementary schools.
That's a worthy suggestion, John. Obviously, there are plenty of people who will buy a bridge in the desert.
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