Day 1,044: Trump got his photo-op and created significant confusion in his short trip to Afghanistan
Thursday, Donald Trump finally made his first trip to Afghanistan, nearly three years after his inauguration. Despite claiming it wasn’t a photo-op, Trump and the White House were quick to release professional photos and videos of his three-hour visit.
He also bragged really strangely about a “gorgeous piece of turkey,” while making the visit about himself, rather than the troops.
After a 13-hour journey, and a brief period on the ground, Trump also wistfully told the troops that his Thanksgiving meal had been cut short. “I sat down, I had a gorgeous piece of turkey and I was all set to go…I had a bite of mashed potatoes, and I never got to the turkey, because Gen. [Mark] Milley said come on over, sir, let’s take some pictures. I never got to my turkey. It’s the first time at Thanksgiving that I’ve never had anything called turkey.“
He also created a ton of confusion when he indicated an American-Taliban cease-fire was imminent, something that took Afghan officials and the Taliban by surprise.
President Trump’s confident assertion that the Taliban is ready and even eager for a cease-fire demanded by the United States in Afghanistan’s 18-year-old war may be more wishful thinking than reality.
Declaring that the U.S.-Taliban talks he abruptly canceled in September are back in motion, Trump said during a Thanksgiving Day visit to troops in Afghanistan that the Taliban “wants to make a deal. And we’re meeting with them, and we’re saying it has to be a cease-fire.”
“They didn’t want to do a cease-fire, but now they do want to do a cease-fire,” Trump said of the militants. “It will probably work out that way. . . . We’ve made tremendous progress,” he added.
But on Friday neither the Taliban nor the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani indicated that a cease-fire was near, or even being discussed in resumed U.S. negotiations.
Even the White House had to walk back Trump’s statement from a “now they want to” to “if an agreement can be reached”.
“As the president said, we are restarting talks with the Taliban. The focus will be on reducing violence,” said a senior administration official, who like others discussed the closed-door talks on the condition of anonymity. “If an agreement can be reached, the two sides could potentially expand the talks and pave the way for signing a peace agreement.”
Others aides underscored Trump’s horrific negotiation tactics leading the Taliban to have no reason to do anything in the immediate future.
But analysts said the main Taliban goal remains the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Afghanistan, and it has little impetus now to stop fighting.
“To date, they’ve very strongly resisted” a cease-fire, “and it’s their best leverage,” said one person familiar with the negotiations. “They have no reason to trade that chit in now, especially at a time where U.S. leverage is a wasting asset, and they believe they’re winning on the battlefield. And Trump has committed to a drawdown of forces regardless, so why would the Taliban offer up a cease-fire now?”
And he didn’t seem to understand that there are various groups in the Middle East with different objectives.
In his remarks to the troops Thursday, Trump appeared to conflate the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, both of which have a presence in Afghanistan, although they compete for followers and do not cooperate with each other.
Trump wanted his photo-op and he got it.
He wanted to check off “visiting Afghanistan” before the 2020 election and he got that too.
But he revealed, yet again, how terrible he is at negotiating policy. He revealed, yet again, how woefully ignorant he is about basic facts on most issues. Dangerously, both of those issues intersect at national security considerations.
1,044 days in, 418 to go
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