Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2021 2:13:23 GMT
With Taliban peace deal, the Trump administration surrenders mantle of moral leadership
www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2020/03/02/with-its-taliban-peace-deal-the-trump-administration-surrenders-the-mantle-of-moral-leadership/
The only true path to peace goes through the legitimate, democratic government of Afghanistan
By Dallas Morning News Editorial
2:00 AM on Mar 2, 2020 CST
There is something that has bothered us for a long time about ongoing negotiations with the Taliban. And now that there are signatures on a peace deal with the former ruling regime of Afghanistan, those concerns rise to the surface as disturbing conclusions about the principles guiding the Trump administration’s approach to national security.
The news over the weekend was that the administration struck a deal with the Taliban that will have the United States withdraw from the country in 14 months if the rogue regime meets certain criteria, including stopping attacks on U.S. forces in the country. The top line is that the White House can claim it is bringing an end to America’s longest war, and the ancillary claim made by Donald Trump is that this agreement will now pit the Taliban against the Islamic state as it tries to compete for space in Afghanistan.
Our concerns start with the fact that, with this agreement, the Trump administration offers legitimacy to an organization best known for using a soccer stadium to carry out public torture and executions, for oppressing women and girls, for targeting the LGBTQ community, and for otherwise imposing an extreme and totalitarian ideology on the people of Afghanistan. And, of course, the Taliban also harbored the leaders of al-Qaeda while they planned and carried out terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001.
By negotiating with the Taliban while excluding the democratically elected government of Afghanistan from those talks, the Trump administration started from the position of surrendering its moral credibility. The administration was looking for a way out of the war, not a path toward actual peace. Let’s be clear: There has always been a viable and instant path to peace if the Taliban would only take it. That required the Taliban, which seeks to dominate the free people of Afghanistan, to lay down its weapons, return home and voice its views on society through the democratic process.
That the Taliban has sought to propagate its power through the cartridge box rather than the ballot box has always been the source of the ongoing military struggle. Nothing changes now that American military forces and their NATO partners will hit the exits. In fact, we can expect the Taliban will be emboldened in the quest to reimpose an autocratic regime over the millions of people who have been working assiduously to create a democratic society in Afghanistan.
The comparison we often hear in regard to Afghanistan is Vietnam, as in the United States is embroiled in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict. But there is a very different Vietnam parallel to keep in mind: The United States is about to give up on a democratic government that will be left alone in a violent part of the world as it fights a brutal ideology. And unlike in the wake of the Vietnam War, the Trump administration isn’t likely to follow in the footsteps of the Ford administration, which granted asylum en masse to the Vietnamese who managed to flee after their democratic government fell. Many of whom, as it turns out, ended up in North Texas and Houston and integrated themselves into the fabric of Texas.
If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, we can expect a new refugee crisis, perhaps on par with what’s happening in Syria, but we can’t reasonably expect this White House to extend an open invitation to those on the run to immigrate to the United States. Instead, the people of Afghanistan who stood with us will be left to the mercies of the cold and desolate wilderness that is the world of an international refugee.
We don’t begrudge the effort to pull the Taliban into the process of building a new society in Afghanistan. In her groundbreaking book A Savage Order, Rachel Kleinfeld notes that the path to reducing violence after conflict involves cutting corrupt deals with the violent people and organizations. Those deals tend to offer asylum from past crimes and even to turn a blind eye to ongoing nonviolent criminal enterprises such as graft or drug dealing.
But those deals should only be cut to buy civil authorities time to grow more powerful than the organized criminal factions that undermine the rule of law. In this case, the Trump administration didn’t cut a deal with a criminal gang to stop violence in a way that would bolster the power of legitimate civil institutions. Instead, the administration cut the legitimate government of Afghanistan out of the conversation as it cut a deal that will likely reveal over time that the Trump administration is both weak and unable to marshal the power of the United States on the world’s stage.
President Richard Nixon talked about “peace with honor” in Vietnam, but he got neither. Trump has a similar message now. But in the end, Trump won’t halt America’s longest running war, because extremists are still seeking to attack the U.S. and make Afghanistan a sanctuary.
Afghanistan is a war that this country is capable of waging. While any life lost in combat is heartbreaking, and it’s crucial that we honor and care for the many thousands of military personnel who’ve returned home with both physical and mental injuries, in the 18 years of war in Afghanistan we’ve had fewer U.S. combat deaths than the number of people killed on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001. But once abandoned by the U.S., it’s unlikely the free people of Afghanistan will be able to push back against the forces that have given every indication they will target the very heart of democratic values. Instead, the war will go on, and civilian deaths will increase. The only real question is whether the president of the United States has the courage, the tenacity and the foresight to join it, to build alliances in that fight, and, yes, to take the political lumps that such leadership requires.
Trump will have his talking point heading into reelection, but each time he talks about ending the country’s longest war, we will know that he is really referring to surrendering the mantle of moral leadership handed to him by a long succession of American presidents.
Dallas Morning News Editorial. Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editor of Editorials.
www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2020/03/02/with-its-taliban-peace-deal-the-trump-administration-surrenders-the-mantle-of-moral-leadership/
The only true path to peace goes through the legitimate, democratic government of Afghanistan
By Dallas Morning News Editorial
2:00 AM on Mar 2, 2020 CST
There is something that has bothered us for a long time about ongoing negotiations with the Taliban. And now that there are signatures on a peace deal with the former ruling regime of Afghanistan, those concerns rise to the surface as disturbing conclusions about the principles guiding the Trump administration’s approach to national security.
The news over the weekend was that the administration struck a deal with the Taliban that will have the United States withdraw from the country in 14 months if the rogue regime meets certain criteria, including stopping attacks on U.S. forces in the country. The top line is that the White House can claim it is bringing an end to America’s longest war, and the ancillary claim made by Donald Trump is that this agreement will now pit the Taliban against the Islamic state as it tries to compete for space in Afghanistan.
Our concerns start with the fact that, with this agreement, the Trump administration offers legitimacy to an organization best known for using a soccer stadium to carry out public torture and executions, for oppressing women and girls, for targeting the LGBTQ community, and for otherwise imposing an extreme and totalitarian ideology on the people of Afghanistan. And, of course, the Taliban also harbored the leaders of al-Qaeda while they planned and carried out terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001.
By negotiating with the Taliban while excluding the democratically elected government of Afghanistan from those talks, the Trump administration started from the position of surrendering its moral credibility. The administration was looking for a way out of the war, not a path toward actual peace. Let’s be clear: There has always been a viable and instant path to peace if the Taliban would only take it. That required the Taliban, which seeks to dominate the free people of Afghanistan, to lay down its weapons, return home and voice its views on society through the democratic process.
That the Taliban has sought to propagate its power through the cartridge box rather than the ballot box has always been the source of the ongoing military struggle. Nothing changes now that American military forces and their NATO partners will hit the exits. In fact, we can expect the Taliban will be emboldened in the quest to reimpose an autocratic regime over the millions of people who have been working assiduously to create a democratic society in Afghanistan.
The comparison we often hear in regard to Afghanistan is Vietnam, as in the United States is embroiled in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict. But there is a very different Vietnam parallel to keep in mind: The United States is about to give up on a democratic government that will be left alone in a violent part of the world as it fights a brutal ideology. And unlike in the wake of the Vietnam War, the Trump administration isn’t likely to follow in the footsteps of the Ford administration, which granted asylum en masse to the Vietnamese who managed to flee after their democratic government fell. Many of whom, as it turns out, ended up in North Texas and Houston and integrated themselves into the fabric of Texas.
If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, we can expect a new refugee crisis, perhaps on par with what’s happening in Syria, but we can’t reasonably expect this White House to extend an open invitation to those on the run to immigrate to the United States. Instead, the people of Afghanistan who stood with us will be left to the mercies of the cold and desolate wilderness that is the world of an international refugee.
We don’t begrudge the effort to pull the Taliban into the process of building a new society in Afghanistan. In her groundbreaking book A Savage Order, Rachel Kleinfeld notes that the path to reducing violence after conflict involves cutting corrupt deals with the violent people and organizations. Those deals tend to offer asylum from past crimes and even to turn a blind eye to ongoing nonviolent criminal enterprises such as graft or drug dealing.
But those deals should only be cut to buy civil authorities time to grow more powerful than the organized criminal factions that undermine the rule of law. In this case, the Trump administration didn’t cut a deal with a criminal gang to stop violence in a way that would bolster the power of legitimate civil institutions. Instead, the administration cut the legitimate government of Afghanistan out of the conversation as it cut a deal that will likely reveal over time that the Trump administration is both weak and unable to marshal the power of the United States on the world’s stage.
President Richard Nixon talked about “peace with honor” in Vietnam, but he got neither. Trump has a similar message now. But in the end, Trump won’t halt America’s longest running war, because extremists are still seeking to attack the U.S. and make Afghanistan a sanctuary.
Afghanistan is a war that this country is capable of waging. While any life lost in combat is heartbreaking, and it’s crucial that we honor and care for the many thousands of military personnel who’ve returned home with both physical and mental injuries, in the 18 years of war in Afghanistan we’ve had fewer U.S. combat deaths than the number of people killed on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001. But once abandoned by the U.S., it’s unlikely the free people of Afghanistan will be able to push back against the forces that have given every indication they will target the very heart of democratic values. Instead, the war will go on, and civilian deaths will increase. The only real question is whether the president of the United States has the courage, the tenacity and the foresight to join it, to build alliances in that fight, and, yes, to take the political lumps that such leadership requires.
Trump will have his talking point heading into reelection, but each time he talks about ending the country’s longest war, we will know that he is really referring to surrendering the mantle of moral leadership handed to him by a long succession of American presidents.
Dallas Morning News Editorial. Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editor of Editorials.