Trump s new afghanistan. Medical search. Frequent questions

American military commanders have similarly long sought an enduring US troop presence in Afghanistan that is based on battlefield conditions rather than an arbitrary withdrawal timeline - seeing it as a critical component of any strategy that aims to drive the Taliban to the negotiating table and compel meaningful cooperation from Pakistan. (cnn.com)
From now on victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating Isis, crushing Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge,' he said. (dailymail.co.uk)
The challenge for Trump is that he also ran as the tough-on-terrorism candidate, and a total U.S. withdrawal would give the Taliban free rein to plot future attacks on the West. (foxnews.com)
The United States and the Taliban have resolved differences in peace talks over the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and guarantees from the insurgents that they will cut ties with other extremist groups, a Taliban official said Tuesday. (armytimes.com)
The United States peace envoy to Afghanistan met with Pakistan's prime minister and other top officials ahead of his flight to Qatar for a crucial round of peace talks with the Taliban. (armytimes.com)
The U.S. and the Taliban appear to be closing in on an agreement under which U.S. forces would withdraw in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not become a haven for other terrorist groups. (armytimes.com)
The Taliban now control roughly half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since 2001, when the U.S.-led invasion toppled their government after it harbored al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. (armytimes.com)
It was seen as a move by Trump to move closer to a 4-year-old campaign promise to remove troops despite concerns that it could undermine negotiations with the Taliban after not meeting required conditions for the withdrawal. (sltrib.com)
The decision in Afghanistan comes nine months after the Trump administration and the Taliban reached a deal that would remove all U.S. troops there by next year if conditions are met. (sltrib.com)
Trump administration claims of progress in talks with the Taliban have sparked fears even among the president's allies that his impatience with the war in Afghanistan will lead him to withdraw troops too soon, leaving the country at risk of returning to the same volatile condition that prompted the invasion in the first place. (militarytimes.com)
For Mr. Bush, the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was an integral part of his "war on terror", launched on September 20, 2001. (eurasiareview.com)
Three months after dramatically calling off peace negotiations with the Taliban , Donald Trump announced he would restart the talks, during a surprise trip to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thursday. (thedailybeast.com)
In a stop at Bagram Air Field with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Trump said leaders of the Taliban "want to make a deal very badly," and suggested they may be open to a ceasefire. (thedailybeast.com)
Trump called off a secret meeting with the Taliban at Camp David in September, after an attack in Kabul that killed a U.S. soldier. (thedailybeast.com)
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening recognized the Taliban 's skills in negotiating and fighting as he sharply criticized President Joe Biden 's Afghanistan withdrawal during a rally in Alabama. (newsweek.com)
Trump: Taliban, great negotiators. (newsweek.com)
Pakistan's army has driven out the local Taliban from the mountains bordering Afghanistan, but other homegrown militants whom it uses as proxies in neighborhood conflicts are allowed to move freely. (wgbh.org)
Trump is responsible for initiating historic peace talks with the Taliban, now proceeding with the Afghan government. (militarytimes.com)
Yes, as an American who supported the original invasion in Afghanistan 20 years ago to overthrow the Taliban and halt support for Al-Qaeda, it also frustrates me that we did not get out of there once the goal was achieved, Rosser claimed in a published analysis on website: nakedcapitalism. (plenglish.com)
There is some hope among American military personnel, Afghan officials, and even Taliban leaders that a Trump presidency will offer a breakthrough in the conflict. (vice.com)
It does not recognize the Afghan government and many experts believe that once the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan, the Taliban will push on all the way to Kabul in the pursuit of a total victory against its enemies. (thediplomat.com)
After successfully protecting its own strategic interests in Afghanistan, often at the cost of U.S. national security interests, Pakistan has played a pivotal role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. (thediplomat.com)
Prime Minister Imran Khan has developed a good personal relationship with Trump, and he may feel that when the moment is right, the Trump administration can be convinced to back a deal with the Taliban, even if it would have far-reaching disastrous consequence for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. (thediplomat.com)
India, which has already expressed concern over the U.S.-Taliban peace talks, will also see the Syria decision as evidence that the United States cannot be a reliable partner in Afghanistan. (thediplomat.com)
This would force Indian national security policymakers to calculate that Pakistan and the Taliban will be an ascendant force in Afghanistan and that India must chart its own path forward to guard its interests. (thediplomat.com)
With Donald Trump's popularity declining in the face of a fast-moving impeachment inquiry, the U.S. president may soon seek to shore up his support by declaring victory in Afghanistan following a deal with the Taliban and pronouncing the end of the war. (thediplomat.com)
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, growing Taliban power and control across the country is being cited as the rationale for a proposal to reverse the withdrawals of US and NATO troops in recent years and to allow a limited return by US forces to combat. (antiwar.com)
Ahead of Trump's announcement, the UN mission to Afghanistan, UNAMA, has reported that, in early August, a joint force of Taliban and ISIS killed at least 36 Afghani civilians. (therealnews.com)
Now, this White House move comes as military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, prefer to keep the level at about 4,500 in Afghanistan going into the spring to put pressure on the Taliban to stop attacks in urban areas, break with al-Qaida and continue peace talks. (tpr.org)
Making the Taliban the primary enemy has gotten the United States into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. (nationalinterest.org)
Increasingly, official statements and media accounts portrayed the Taliban as America's primary enemy in Afghanistan. (nationalinterest.org)
The problem of Afghanistan for presidents is that if you bring all the troops out and then the Taliban take the capital of Kabul the next month, you have egg on your face. (juancole.com)
2. Through 2019, Trump and his officials negotiate with the Taliban. (juancole.com)
In September, Trump calls off the talks after a Taliban attack on U.S. troops, but by December his informal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad announces that negotiations have resumed. (juancole.com)
The US-Taliban talks were criticized for being bilateral and for excluding the official government of Afghanistan, headed by Ashraf Ghani. (juancole.com)
Please note that Trump said he believed that the Taliban would take up the slack in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, and that he really believed the Taliban wanted peace. (juancole.com)
In all the press pillorying of President Biden, which has barely mentioned Trump, I have seen no one mention that Trump once claimed that upon the US withdrawal the Taliban would take up the war on terror. (juancole.com)
Even while he was talking with them, the Taliban occasionally brought old al-Qaeda commandos to the parts of Afghanistan they controlled. (juancole.com)
He pledged that the Afghanistan government of Ashraf Ghani would release 5,000 captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. (juancole.com)
In return for these steps and for a promise that the U.S. would withdraw completely from Afghanistan, the Taliban pledged not to attack the remaining U.S. troops in the country by May 1, 2021. (juancole.com)
Julian Borger at The Guardian quoted Ashley Jackson, "the director of the ODI's Centre for the Study of Armed Groups" as saying at the time, "This is the last leverage the US had left in talks with the Taliban, and Trump is proposing to give it away for free. (juancole.com)
Trump negotiating with the Taliban. (patriotpost.us)
A new poll from The Daily Wire uncovered that more Americans believe that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is President Joe Biden's fault, not Donald Trump's fault. (dailywire.com)
When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. (dailywire.com)
U.S. forces had already drawn down during the Trump administration from roughly 15,500 American forces to 2,500 troops in [the] country, and the Taliban was at its strongest militarily since 2001. (dailywire.com)
So would you have withdrawn troops like this even if President Trump had not made that deal with the Taliban? (dailywire.com)
The steep drop-off in approval came in mid-August, the same time Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. (dailywire.com)
The Taliban previously insisted on a complete American withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the militant faction and Washington reportedly resolved differences over that question earlier this month. (usahitman.com)
The prospective peace deal is said to entail a reduction of US troops in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban that it won't use Afghanistan as a "safe haven" for terrorism, as well as an eventual ceasefire between the Taliban and the US-backed Afghan national government. (usahitman.com)
After three years fighting the Taliban - who Washington accused of harboring the 9/11 plotters - President George Bush declared Afghanistan to be the "first victory in the war on terror," yet the conflict drags on 15 years later. (usahitman.com)
In Afghanistan, the Taliban has still not renounced al-Qaida - a key precondition for withdrawal in the U.S.-Taliban agreement inked last February. (defenseone.com)
Defense officials insisted earlier on Tuesday that the proper conditions had been met to allow the troop drawdowns without damaging U.S. national security or the ongoing mission to support Taliban-Afghan peace talks that are meant to end the war in Afghanistan. (defenseone.com)
Yet asked specifically about the ongoing ties between the Taliban and al-Qaida, a defense official said, "Al-Qaida has been in Afghanistan for decades and the reality is we'd be fools to say they are going to leave tomorrow. (defenseone.com)
The solution in Afghanistan is to broker a power sharing or some form of agreement whereby the two…can live side-by-side in peace," the official continued, referring to the current Afghan government and the Taliban. (defenseone.com)
We witnessed the Taliban take over in Afghanistan and the Junta coup in Myanmar. (lu.se)

Now, Trump has announced that U.S. troops will remain in the country. (nymag.com)
There are about 11,000 US troops currently deployed to Afghanistan. (cnn.com)
Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that just over 3,000 additional US troops were in the process of deploying to Afghanistan in order to be part of a "stronger train, advise and assist effort. (cnn.com)
The British Defence Secretary today welcomed the decision by Donald Trump to leave US troops in Afghanistan . (dailymail.co.uk)
The final British combat troops left Afghanistan in 2014. (dailymail.co.uk)
Mr Trump said he believed allies would back increases in troops numbers in a speech evoking the 9/11 attack in 2001 which drew the US into the war, as well as the recent terror in Barcelona. (dailymail.co.uk)
Then-president George W Bush sent troops into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack and while his successor, Barack Obama, increased the military presence to over 100,000 and failed to bring it to a close as he had planned. (dailymail.co.uk)
Obama surged tens of thousands of additional US troops into Afghanistan, but when he gave a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, announcing the new troops, he also simultaneously announced their withdrawal date. (cnn.com)
As to the number of additional American troops going to Afghanistan, last week President Trump delegated that decision to Defense Secretary James Mattis. (cnn.com)
The US official put the number of new troops that is expected to deploy to Afghanistan at 3,800, adding to the 8,400 that are already there. (cnn.com)
The addition of new troops is part of a broader South Asia strategy that the Trump administration is formulating that will include how to deal with Afghanistan's neighbors such as Pakistan. (cnn.com)
US President Donald Trump sits down for lunch with troops during a visit to the US Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base on February 6, 2017 in Tampa, Florida. (cnn.com)
The senior US official said that the rush to add troops before the overall South Asia strategy was set was the result of the worsening security and political situation in Afghanistan that was particularly underlined by a massive truck bomb that blew up in Kabul's diplomatic quarter on May 31, killing more than 150. (cnn.com)
Trump, who is spending most of the week at his golf club in New Jersey, has long been skeptical of the need to keep a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been fighting since 2001. (armytimes.com)
The U.S. has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. (armytimes.com)
The senator is criticizing an move by the Trump administration to reduce U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. (sltrib.com)
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said Tuesday that a decision by the Trump administration to cut in half the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and some withdrawals in Iraq "risks alienating our allies and emboldening our enemies. (sltrib.com)
The decision to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and potentially elsewhere should not be based on a U.S. political calendar," Romney said in a written statement. (sltrib.com)
The administration has yet to explain why reducing troops in Afghanistan - where conditions for withdrawal have not been met - is a wise decision for our national security interests in the region," he wrote. (sltrib.com)
WASHINGTON - In a bipartisan rebuke to President Donald Trump, the Senate voted 68-23 Thursday to advance an amendment that would oppose withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan . (militarytimes.com)
The amendment by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell comes after Trump called for a drawdown of troops in both of those countries. (militarytimes.com)
It's time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Syria," Paul wrote in a tweet, saying he stands with Trump. (militarytimes.com)
But Trump has continued to discuss reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to 8,600, from the current levels of less than 14,000. (thedailybeast.com)
On Thursday, in this first visit to Afghanistan, he said the U.S. military had continued to make "tremendous progress" in the region while paring down the number of troops stationed there. (thedailybeast.com)
Following a week of blistering attacks against his successor, the Biden administration's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was predictably a central focus of Trump's speech at a rally held, in part, in support of Mo Brooks' campaign for a Senate seat. (newsweek.com)
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - President Donald Trump made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Thursday to visit American troops for Thanksgiving. (nbcnews.com)
Trump said this summer that he aimed to reduce that figure, and last month the top U.S. general in Afghanistan said the total number of troops in the country had decreased by around 2,000 . (nbcnews.com)
We're bringing down the number of troops substantially," Trump said during his visit Thursday. (nbcnews.com)
The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history, claiming some 147,000 lives since the conflict started in 2001, including about 40,000 civilians, 60,000 Afghan security forces and 3,500 coalition troops - about 2,400 of them Americans, according to a study from Brown University . (nbcnews.com)
WASHINGTON ― Weeks after the U.S. military was blindsided by President Donald Trump's assertion that all U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, a top lawmaker on defense says there was no actual plan to withdraw troops by Christmas. (militarytimes.com)
Biden wants to pull "the vast majority" of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan while Trump's second-term agenda would continue to reduce the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (militarytimes.com)
During his election campaign four years ago, Trump pledged to bring all troops home from "endless wars," at times triggering pushback from military commanders, defense leaders and even Republican lawmakers worried about abruptly abandoning partners on the ground. (militarytimes.com)
Confusion about the pace of U.S. troop withdrawals from America's longest war - an emotional topic for the troops and their families - began Oct. 7, when Trump tweeted that "we should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas. (militarytimes.com)
Defense officials have insisted there are no plans to have all troops home from Afghanistan by the holidays or the end of the year. (militarytimes.com)
The topic was the subject of contradictory remarks from Trump's national security adviser Robert O'Brien, who asserted the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would shrink to 2,500 early next year, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (militarytimes.com)
The president gave Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the power to send up to 3,900 more troops to Afghanistan earlier this summer, but the secretary refused to do so without a new strategy in place, signed off on by the president. (foreignpolicy.com)
Gen. James Linder, the head of U.S. and NATO special operations forces in Afghanistan, said Sunday the nearly 4,000 troops requested by the Pentagon for Afghanistan includes about 460 trainers to help increase the size of the commandos. (foreignpolicy.com)
But other than vague commitments to keep troops in the country, it's not clear what direction a Trump policy will take. (vice.com)
Obama going to spend Christmas with troops in Afghanistan in surprise visit? (ronpaulforums.com)
The plans for the three countries now being developed within the Trump administration encompass long-term stationing of troops, access to bases and the authority to wage war in these three countries. (antiwar.com)
But a group of officers who have worked closely with Gen. Petraeus on Iraq and Afghanistan, which includes McMaster, has been pushing a much more ambitious plan, in which thousands - and perhaps many thousands - of US ground troops would lead a coalition of Sunni Arab troops to destroy Islamic State's forces in Syria rather than relying on Kurdish forces to do the job. (antiwar.com)
Before you start thinking 'Trump's non-plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan sounds a-okay to us, actually! (wonkette.com)
Trump vented to his national security team that the veterans told him forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have not been helpful, and he lamented that China is making money off of Afghanistan's estimated $1 trillion in rare minerals while American troops are fighting the war, officials said. (wonkette.com)
The White House plans to cut the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (tpr.org)
BOWMAN: Well, I'm told by U.S. official there's been a verbal order from the White House to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan from about 4,500 to 2,500 by January. (tpr.org)
In fact, military leaders are trying to convince President Trump to escalate U.S. involvement once more by sending several thousand additional troops into the fray. (nationalinterest.org)
President Obama will keep at least 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the end of his term in 2017. (reason.com)
Is Trump leaving 2500 Troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan as a Poison Pill for Biden? (juancole.com)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Dustin Jones at NPR reports that Trump has instructed the Pentagon to bring most US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. (juancole.com)
There are only 3,000 US troops left in Iraq, after Trump initiated a feud with the country's Shiite national guard in January by killing the leader of the Party of God Brigades, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, with a strike on Baghdad International Airport that also killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani of Iran. (juancole.com)
So Trump is in fact only bringing 500 US troops out of Iraq. (juancole.com)
As for Afghanistan, President Obama had attempted to get out entirely in 2013 and 2014, and then in 2016 announced he would keep 8,400 troops there through the end of his term, saying that a final withdrawal would be up to his successor. (juancole.com)
If Biden puts the number of troops back up to 5,000, then Trump can say that Biden dragged us back in to fruitless Middle East wars. (juancole.com)
1. in December, 2018, Trump ordered that half of the then 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan be brought out. (juancole.com)
In the treaty, Trump promised to pull 8,500 troops out of the country in about 4 1/2 months. (juancole.com)
When you hear advocates of staying in Afghanistan forever say that US troops had not been attacked in the past 18 months, that is why. (juancole.com)
4. On October 8, 2020, Trump tweeted out that all US troops would be out of Afghanistan by Christmas of that year. (juancole.com)
In light of the Afghan government's downfall, Biden attempted to blame Trump for allegedly leaving him with a bad deal that forced the current administration to remove troops. (dailywire.com)
During a national address , Biden took full responsibility for his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan while simultaneously claiming that Trump's negotiations forced him into pulling U.S. military support for the Afghan government. (dailywire.com)
US President Donald Trump said that Washington plans to leave 8,600 American troops in Afghanistan, but suggested further cuts could follow - over 15 years after President Bush boasted major victories against terrorists there. (usahitman.com)
The pair, according to some media reports, were expected to review Pentagon plans for sending more than 15,000 US troops to Afghanistan. (motherjones.com)
Still, one question is whether Obama's basic approach to Afghanistan-which appears to involve beefing up the troops in the NATO-led force there-has a fatal flaw. (motherjones.com)
The U.S. is pausing movement of troops into Afghanistan and quarantining 1,500 new arrivals to country due to virus. (defenseone.com)
President Trump's new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Tuesday announced that the United States will draw down its forces in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 troops in each country by Jan. 15, just days before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. (defenseone.com)
In his Pentagon remarks, Miller characterized the reductions as a "successful and responsible conclusion" to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq - even as defense officials detailing the announcement to reporters earlier in the day insisted that thousands of troops would remain to "carry out our mission with our allies and our partners. (defenseone.com)
The United States currently has roughly 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and about 3,000 in Iraq. (defenseone.com)

Getty President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense James Mattis in January 2017. (heavy.com)
A disturbing departure in the Trump administration from full and thorough policy processes comes to light in a Washington Post article that focuses on the influence of one of Trump's generals, Secretary of Defense James Mattis. (lobelog.com)
The two top national security officials in the Trump administration - Secretary of Defense James Mattis and national security adviser HR McMaster - are trying to secure long-term US ground and air combat roles in the three long-running wars in the greater Middle East - Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. (antiwar.com)

NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 19: President Donald Trump speaks to world leaders at the 72nd United Nations (UN) General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 19, 2017 in New York City. (cnn.com)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his address to the nation from Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, on August 21, 2017. (cnn.com)
President Donald Trump speaks at Fort Myer in Arlington Va., Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, during a Presidential Address to the Nation about a strategy he believes will best position the U.S. to eventually declare victory in Afghanistan. (foxnews.com)
This was the first time Trump has held an official rally in Alabama since 2017, though he visited the state several times during the early stages of his 2020 presidential campaign. (newsweek.com)

He was the first GOP senator to congratulate Democrat Joe Biden as the winner in the presidential election as Trump continues to claim he won. (sltrib.com)
Faced with backlash among Republicans , Biden has taken to the podium twice over the past week to defend his actions in Afghanistan. (newsweek.com)
They portrayed the president's attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, an allegation Trump denies. (nbcnews.com)
Biden and other Democrats have linked DePape's attack to Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, which Trump still promotes on his Truth Social platform. (yahoo.com)
The topic has featured in the presidential race between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, who have both suggested that America's longest war needs to end. (militarytimes.com)
Washington, Aug 16 (Prensa Latina) President Joe Biden will pay for mistakes made by Donald Trump in his Afghanistan, Barkley Rosser, professor of economics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said. (plenglish.com)
In an assessment of how President Biden followed Trump´s foreign policy, Rosser pointed out that GOPers falsely claimed that Afghanistan disaster will be Biden´s fault, not his predecessor. (plenglish.com)
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but we know that Trump and his aides are doing whatever they can to sabotage the incoming Biden administration and to prepare for a 2024 Trump run for the presidency. (juancole.com)
Maybe Trump wants to be able to tell his 70 million acolytes in 2024 that he got the US out of Afghanistan and Iraq almost entirely, but then Biden came in and screwed things up. (juancole.com)
If Biden is the one who withdraws completely from Afghanistan and then Kabul falls, it will be the Democrats who have egg on their faces. (juancole.com)
When Biden was vice president, he opposed Gen. David Petraeus's big think plan for a huge "counter-insurgency" effort in Afghanistan, preferring a small special operations force that would concentrate on counter-terrorism. (juancole.com)
In the wake of Joe Biden's disgraceful surrender and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan (AFG), the administration is seeding a lot of deliberate obfuscation about the difference in the Afghan exit plan negotiated by Donald Trump and that executed by Biden. (patriotpost.us)
Attempting to defend his retreat and surrender, Biden declared the day after, "[We] ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan - the longest war in American history. (patriotpost.us)
In recent days, Biden has repeatedly attempted to blame-shift his AFG failure to Trump. (patriotpost.us)
The Biden Administration has attempted to deflect blame for the fall-out in Afghanistan, but Americans aren't buying it. (dailywire.com)
According to The Daily Wire/SurveyMonkey poll, 36 percent of American's believe that Biden is responsible for the current crisis in Afghanistan. (dailywire.com)
According to the poll, which surveyed 1,066 Americans, independents are twice as likely to blame Biden than Trump for the debacle. (dailywire.com)
Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 - just a little over three months after I took office," Biden said. (dailywire.com)
Now, the Biden administration is out with a new review finding it should have left Afghanistan earlier, but it also blames former President Donald Trump for the withdrawal. (wpsu.org)

The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, used a substantial part of his speech before Tuesday's session of the United Nations General Assembly to praise President Donald Trump's recently announced strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia. (cnn.com)
President Donald Trump, center, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, behind him at right, while addressing members of the military during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (militarytimes.com)
His Tweet took Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan by surprise, or, more likely, by shock. (juancole.com)

Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to hold a rally on July 3, 2021 in Sarasota, Florida. (newsweek.com)
Words like disaster and debacle have been used to describe the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, during which a terrorist attack killed 13 service members and as many as 170 civilians. (wpsu.org)
Miller caught himself after mistakenly saying that the United States would meet a withdrawal deadline of Jan. 15, "2001" - accidentally conflating 2021 with the year the Afghanistan conflict began. (defenseone.com)
Golan Eagle placed adjacent to the entrance to Trump Heights in honor of Donald J. Trump (2020) Trump Square in Petah Tikva, Israel, named in honour of Donald Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the country's capital (2019) Order of Freedom from Kosovo (2020) Order of Muhammad from Morocco (2021) Bible, Mitzi (September 24, 2012).Donald Trump addresses largest Convocation crowd, praises Liberty's growth. (wikipedia.org)
2021 was the year that Trump followers, allegedly egged on by the losing candidate himself, ran a riot on Capitol Hill. (lu.se)
On August 29, 2021, the United States government oversaw the emergent establishment of Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), led by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and implemented by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. Department of State (DoS), to safely resettle U.S. citizens and Afghan nationals from Afghanistan to the United States. (bvsalud.org)
On August 30, CDC issued an Epi-X notice encouraging public health officials to maintain vigilance for measles among Afghan evacuees because of an ongoing measles outbreak in Afghanistan (25,988 clinical cases reported nationwide during January-November 2021) (1) and low routine measles vaccination coverage (66% and 43% for the first and second doses, respectively, in 2020) (2). (bvsalud.org)

During the July 19 meeting, Trump repeatedly suggested that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford replace Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, because he is not winning the war, the officials said. (wonkette.com)

Colonel Jack Jacobs, recipient of the Medal of Honor, talks with Rachel Maddow about what Donald Trump's Afghanistan speech means about how the U.S. will conduct itself there going forward, and whether that represents any actual change. (msnbc.com)
The elements of President Donald Trump's approach to the Afghanistan war are emerging - and they're markedly different from the stance President Barack Obama took. (cnn.com)
At that point, whether he leaves it on the course set by Barack Obama or tries to chart a new one, Afghanistan will be Donald Trump's war. (vice.com)

No blackout: Could Trump's Afghanistan move eclipse his political problems? (foxnews.com)
Trump's Afghanistan address an opportunity to get his agenda back on track? (foxbusiness.com)

He is said to have been angling to become secretary of state in a second Trump term. (juancole.com)

The Trump administration won't replicate this mistake -there will be no announcements of withdrawal dates, according to the US official. (cnn.com)
As the Times noted, Trump tweeted about Afghanistan in 2013: "We should have a speedy withdrawal. (foxnews.com)
Officials declined to address reports that Trump has also ordered the withdrawal of the roughly 700 special operators in Somalia. (defenseone.com)

US officials have long accused Pakistan's leadership of not doing enough to stabilize Afghanistan and have suspected that Pakistan knowingly hid terrorists. (cnn.com)
U.S. lawmakers grilled Trump administration officials Tuesday on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, saying the new White House strategy is inconsistent and and is not producing results. (voanews.com)
To underscore his view that the veterans who fought in the war may be better positioned to advise him on an Afghanistan strategy, Trump compared the policy review process to the renovation of a famed New York restaurant in the 1980s , officials said. (wonkette.com)
President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war's top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House, according to senior administration officials. (wonkette.com)
Early August, we reported that the White House officials were drawing up plans for Afghanistan, under the leadership of two private military firms. (therealnews.com)
When pressed, U.S. officials and members of Congress , then and in subsequent years, conceded that there were no longer more than a few dozen Al Qaeda operatives remaining in Afghanistan. (nationalinterest.org)

President Trumps' new strategy includes the disruption and denial of sanctuary to terrorists whose motives know no boundaries," Ghani said. (cnn.com)
At the same time, they are housing the very terrorists we are fighting … that must change immediately," Trump added. (cnn.com)
Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan (and) much to lose from harboring criminals and terrorists," Trump said in his speech Monday. (cnn.com)
Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan, it has much to lose by continuing to harbour criminals and terrorists,' he said. (dailymail.co.uk)
We are killing terrorists," Trump said in the closest thing to a sound bite. (foxnews.com)
Trump says we must stay in Afghanistan to avoid creating a "vacuum of power" that will be filled by terrorists. (globalexchange.org)
Now that Islamic State forces are being pushed out of Mosul, both the Trump administration and the Iraqi government are beginning to focus on how to ensure that the terrorists do not return. (antiwar.com)

Trump also ordered the military to develop plans to remove up to half of the 14,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (militarytimes.com)
Trump raised the number to 14,000. (juancole.com)

He spent most of his speech condemning his successor, boasting about the Trump administration's accomplishments and pushing false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. (newsweek.com)
But at Monday's daily press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said nothing so definitive was on the agenda and that the Obama administration's review of its Afghanistan policy was still under way. (motherjones.com)

Around 13,000 U.S. personnel are still stationed in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist local forces under a NATO mission, and to conduct counterterrorism operations. (nbcnews.com)

Ghani said Afghanistan is doing a lot more to combat corruption and promote merit over patronage, issues long prioritized by the US. (cnn.com)
Ghani thanked Trump for his "leadership" and "determination" and said Afghan security forces had begun taking the lead. (thedailybeast.com)
But under strong Trump pressure, Ghani let the fighters go by the following October. (juancole.com)

In my call with Secretary Mattis yesterday we agreed that despite the challenges, we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to help build up its fragile democracy and reduce the terrorist threat to the West. (dailymail.co.uk)
But Trump has also installed a trio of retired generals-Jim Mattis, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly-at the top of his administration, and they are not in favor of what George W. Bush used to call cutting and running. (foxnews.com)
It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will approve the proposals that Mattis and McMaster have pushed in recent weeks. (antiwar.com)

Donald Trump and Mike Pence. (eurasiareview.com)

The George W Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration both denied officially that they sought "permanent bases" in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. (antiwar.com)
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates was scheduled to brief President Barack Obama on Afghanistan on Monday afternoon. (motherjones.com)
President Barack Obama has made clear he is counting on America's NATO allies for greater military contributions in Afghanistan. (motherjones.com)

Asked by the pool whether talks had restarted Trump said "yes" without giving details. (nbcnews.com)

Obama, who also had antiwar instincts, struggled with Afghanistan throughout his eight years, at one point announcing a military surge to be followed by a drawdown-which drew flak from many military strategists. (foxnews.com)
In a wide-ranging interview about Democratic foreign policy ideas, Smith favored an aggressive drawdown and was confident a combination of partner forces and U.S. intelligence could be used contain the threat of a transnational attack from Afghanistan. (militarytimes.com)
Biden's disastrous AFG exfil versus the Trump plan for a troop drawdown is a stark and disastrous contrast. (patriotpost.us)
President Trump announced the possible drawdown on Thursday morning in an interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade. (usahitman.com)

The visit comes at a tumultuous time in the Trump presidency, following public testimony from senior diplomats in the House impeachment inquiry. (nbcnews.com)
Impending choices by President Trump regarding the war in Afghanistan raise issues of national security decision-making in his presidency that in turn evoke pathologies of the past, with Trump's personal habits threatening to make matters at least as bad as in the past. (lobelog.com)

The February, 2020, peace treaty was clearly rushed through by Trump in hopes it would add to his popularity and help him win the November, 2020 presidential election. (juancole.com)

The United States did engage in military cooperation with the Northern Alliance, the principal armed faction opposing the government in Kabul, when Washington launched the invasion of Afghanistan. (nationalinterest.org)

Judging from his position during the campaign and his recent remarks, Trump may well baulk at the plans now being pushed by his advisers. (antiwar.com)
President Trump Makes Remarks at the Liberty University Commencement Ceremony. (wikipedia.org)

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other members of the national security team briefed President Donald Trump on Friday on the state of peace negotiations in Afghanistan, with Pompeo saying afterward that "led by the president, we are working diligently on the path forward. (armytimes.com)
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States is "in very strong" peace negotiations in Afghanistan but he did not know whether they will be successful. (tolonews.com)
We're in very strong negotiations with Afghanistan right now," Trump said, addressing reports after delivering a Thanksgiving holiday message to US soldiers in Afghanistan. (tolonews.com)

Who is Mark C Scarsi, the Trump-appointed judge assigned to Hunter Biden's case? (foxnews.com)
Trump, however, won't be in office after January 20, whatever he may think, and so that decision will be Biden's. (juancole.com)
29 percent of Americans say it's neither Trump nor Biden's fault. (dailywire.com)
In a press statement following Biden's address, Trump dubbed the way America left Afghanistan "grossly incompetent. (dailywire.com)

KELLY: You know, U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan are not supposed to be entirely mired in Washington politics. (tpr.org)

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said he thinks Trump announced the withdrawals too abruptly, but the U.S. has been in Afghanistan and Syria for too long. (militarytimes.com)
Donald Trump said Bernie Sanders had lost the "FBI primary" to Hillary Clinton, who the FBI decided not to indict over her misuse of a personal e-mail server. (reason.com)

Given the Syria debacle, one cannot rule out a tweet that abruptly announces the end of the war in Afghanistan. (thediplomat.com)
The last sentence of this tweet is worth underlining, because as the U.S. elections draw near and the impeachment inquiry drags on, Trump may once again go against the advice of his own administration and announce an abrupt end to America's longest war in history. (thediplomat.com)

Trump abruptly tweeted plans for a U.S. pullout from Syria in December, arguing that the Islamic State had been defeated even though his intelligence chiefs have said the group remains a threat. (militarytimes.com)

Getting the Afghanistan strategy right not only could determine the fate of America's longest war, but also could have a powerful impact on America's role in South Asia. (cnn.com)
The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan is now well into its sixteenth year, making it America's longest foreign war. (nationalinterest.org)
President Trump hailed the U.S. military after it dropped the "mother of all bombs," America's largest non-nuclear weapon, in Afghanistan on Thursday. (cnas.org)

According to a report to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, only about 57 percent of the districts in the country were under the Afghan government's control as of November 2016, a 15 percent decrease from the previous year. (foreignpolicy.com)
Miller's Tuesday announcement ended several days of speculation and reporting that Trump would seek to accelerate drawdowns from the "endless wars" that he vowed to end as a presidential candidate in 2016. (defenseone.com)

The British Empire got bogged down there without victory in 1800s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s ("their Vietnam") was disastrous. (globalexchange.org)

Every day that goes by, we lose a few more square miles," added Bolger, former commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013 and author of Why We Lost , a book about US military leadership's failures in the Middle East. (vice.com)
They will be submitted to Trump separately, with the plan for Afghanistan coming sometime before a NATO summit in Brussels on 25 May. (antiwar.com)

He said the strategy , which states that US military engagement in the country will be based on conditions rather than timelines, provided a certainty over US support for Afghanistan which he said the Afghan people had been seeking "for years. (cnn.com)
The rebuttal comes days after Trump's speech Monday in which he announced that the US military would expand its presence in the war in Afghanistan, now in its 16th year . (cnn.com)
For one thing, Trump is committing US military forces to a long-term and open-ended deployment in Afghanistan, according to a senior US official. (cnn.com)
Candidate Trump heavily criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq-Afghanistan, not so much-and his instincts are undoubtedly to minimize our military footprint. (foxnews.com)
In fact, Trump said that "military power alone" could not prevail and that "our patience is not unlimited. (foxnews.com)
He said that he and his American counterpart discussed "important progress we have jointly made in our military efforts in the battlefield" and that Trump "appreciated the tireless efforts of the Afghan security forces in this fight. (nbcnews.com)
There is speculation that Trump, backed by a Republican-led Congress, will take a tougher line with the civilian and military leadership, focusing narrowly on U.S. security interests, and demanding tangible results in curbing jihadist activity if aid dollars are to continue to flow. (wgbh.org)
Military leaders have insisted - and President Trump has at times himself - that security conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, must dictate troop cuts. (tpr.org)

My original instinct was to pull out and historically I like following my instincts, but all my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office,' Mr Trump said. (dailymail.co.uk)
When Donald Trump finally has his feet under the desk in the Oval Office and opens the files marked "Afghanistan" and "Pakistan," he will find much to worry about. (wgbh.org)

In fact, being its immediate neighbor, Pakistan has an abiding interest in peace and stability in Afghanistan. (cnn.com)
In particular, Trump had harsh words for Pakistan, the US ally that borders Afghanistan to the south. (cnn.com)
In its statement, Pakistan defended its role in the lengthy war and said it has worked to promote peace in Afghanistan. (cnn.com)
The Committee observed that Pakistan has consistently supported all international efforts for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan," the council's statement said. (cnn.com)
Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai realised early on that the key to restoring peace and stability in Afghanistan lay in Pakistan. (eurasiareview.com)
Trump may well demand that Pakistan finally acts decisively against all Islamist militant organizations operating from its soil, including the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and the anti-India jihadist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. (wgbh.org)
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sent Trump an enthusiastic message of congratulation, saying his "momentous success" is a testimony to the confidence Americans have in his "leadership and vision," and inviting him to Pakistan at the earliest opportunity. (wgbh.org)

Trump sounded like a reluctant warrior in last night's speech from Fort Myer, Va. He said his original instinct was to pull out of Afghanistan, but that the consequences of a rapid exit "are both predictable and unacceptable. (foxnews.com)

Though many Democrats have argued that the U.S. should eventually withdraw from the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, around half of them supported McConnell's resolution. (militarytimes.com)
Trump tweeted that "Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. (thediplomat.com)
Will Trump Agree to the Pentagon's Permanent War in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria? (antiwar.com)
The initial plan for the defeat of IS in Syria, submitted to Trump in February, called for an increase in the size of US ground forces beyond the present level of 1,000. (antiwar.com)
We've already seen an increase in airstrikes in Afghanistan, as we've seen an increase in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, as well as, say, we've seen an increase with our allies, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. (therealnews.com)

5. While Trump was deeply drawing down the US troop presence in Afghanistan, he was doing nothing to get Afghan interpreters and allies out of harm's way. (juancole.com)

Should Khan succeed at this, the U.S. would quickly lose influence and leverage in Afghanistan, creating long-term national security risks for Washington. (thediplomat.com)

China purchased mineral rights in Afghanistan a decade ago, investment the U.S. supported at the time. (wonkette.com)
And while we're taking a ride in the Wayback Machine, remember when Donald Trump spent a decade tweeting insane shit about how we just needed to pack it up and declare victory already? (wonkette.com)
To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask, 'What is the vital national interest? (patriotpost.us)

The Iraq invasion however diluted Washington's focus on the challenges it faced in Afghanistan. (eurasiareview.com)
The 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan came on the heels of the September 11 terrorist attacks, which left thousands dead and injured in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania. (usahitman.com)

On January 20, next year, Donald Trump will take over as the 45th President of the United States of America, at a time when the U.S. remains engaged in the longest war in its history - the war in Afghanistan. (eurasiareview.com)

Global Exchange has been warning of the dangers of occupying Afghanistan since we invaded just after the attacks of September 11, 2001. (globalexchange.org)
They stopped the attacks because Trump promised to leave. (juancole.com)
The insurgent group has also upped its attacks in recent months, with October seeing the highest civilian death toll in Afghanistan in over a year. (defenseone.com)

They took some time to stabilize me in Afghanistan and do the surgery to remove my right eye. (bizpacreview.com)

Trump accused anti-Gaddafi fighters of opposing the United States in the Iraq War. (washingtonindependent.com)

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