LETTER: Trump’s concessions to Taliban set stage for Afghanistan chaos

To Ozaukee Press:

I read with interest Peggy Klug’s account in her letter to the editor in last week’s Ozaukee Press of the Trump-versus-Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan. I am not sure of her research account. Here is what I do know:

Biden did not meet or call the Taliban’s de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in 2001. Biden’s emissary, CIA Director William Burns, met with Ghani in August 2021. Ghani was organizing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the home base for the 9/11 attacks on America. Trump’s secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, negotiated the release of Ghani from Pakistani internment in 2018.

The day after Biden’s win, Trump tweeted about election fraud and then went golfing at his club, Trump National, in Sterling, Virginia. He was  preoccupied with his loss and not that of a collapsing country—a 60% takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, a shrinking government, retreating security forces.

The Doha Peace Agreement, February 2020, negotiated by Trump and his administration did include a reduction in American forces. But Trump also agreed to freeing 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers, excluding the elected Afghan government from any negotiations and setting May 1, 2021, as the final withdrawal date. Trump’s agreement resulted in a reinforced Taliban, aggressive fighting overcoming the Afghan forces and al-Qaeda terrorists welcomed into the Taliban leadership.

Next: The retired generals referred to in the letter have been out of active service for decades. They are a formed committee of conspiracy theorists who questioned the presidential election results and supported Trump in overthrowing our democratic, legally elected government. They are not boots on the ground, but are a part of Trump’s dumbed-down Americans.

In comparison, Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s appointee as joint chiefs chairman, stated to the  House Armed Services Committee, “If the U.S. military had stayed in Afghanistan past Aug. 31, the risk of attacks on both American civilians and service members would have increased.” Defense Secretary Lloyd testified, “Staying longer than we did would have made it even more dangerous for our people and would not have significantly changed the number of evacuees we could get out.”

Perhaps if Trump had been honest in recognizing his presidential defeat, the withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been less traumatic. But as former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said, Trump was “a chaos president.”

Kenneth M. Bretl
Fredonia