March 2020 – Page 6

We’ve alluded before to the sharp divergence between President Trump’s reckless and counterproductive rhetoric about Afghanistan and his more careful and deliberative actions vis-à-vis the country.

Rhetorically, Trump is eager to bug out of Afghanistan and end so-called endless wars. Yet, his actions there have been far more sober and deliberative than his foolish rhetoric suggests.

The danger is that Trump’s isolationist instincts will win out and that the disaster we’ve seen unfolding in Syria as a result of Trump’s sudden bug out there will be repeated in Afghanistan, albeit with far worse results.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, this same dichotomy exists in the new peace agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban Saturday. The early indications are that Trump intends go all-in on the deal and live out his isolationist fantasies.

Diplomacy. Of course, pursuing a diplomatic solution in Afghanistan is a good idea. As Michèle Flournoy and Stephen J. Hadley explain in the Washington Post, “What is the alternative? After more than 18 years of war, neither the Taliban nor the combined U.S., Afghan and coalition forces have been able to defeat the other.”

But for diplomacy to be successful and not simply a ruse for surrender and defeat, the United States has to be determined to walk away from the negotiations if the Taliban does not act in good faith and fails to meet its obligations under the agreement.

The Department of Defense and the Department of State clearly understand this. Which is why both the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, have both stressed that the agreement is “conditions-based.”

What Esper and Pompeo mean is this: If the facts on the ground in Afghanistan do not correspond with what was agreed to, then the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops will be called off.

“This deal doesn’t depend upon trusting anyone,” Pompeo told Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan.

It has a deep, complex, well-thought-out, multi-month-negotiated verification complex and mechanism by which we can observe and hold every member of the agreement accountable.

We’ll do that. It’s not about trust. It’s about what happens on the ground, not only yesterday which was an important day, but in the days that follow.

“This is a conditions-based agreement,” added Esper in the Washington Post.

As this is a conditions-based agreement, if we assess that the Taliban is honoring the terms of the deal, the United States will reduce its military presence to 8,600 troops within a matter of months.

This drawdown will be part of a NATO-approved plan for commensurate reductions by other troop-contributing nations.

If progress on the political front between the Taliban and the current Afghan government continues, then the United States and its partners will further reduce our presence toward a goal of zero in 2021. If progress stalls, then our drawdown likely will be suspended, as well.

So far so good. The problem, as always, is the man at the top: President Trump, who is clearly singing a different tune.

Time-Based Deal. For Trump, the agreement is not conditions-based; it is time-based. Indeed, time, not conditions, are the determinative factor. We’ve been in Afghanistan for almost two decades, damn it, and, well, it’s just time to get out!

That’s a paraphrase of what Trump said, but it is an accurate paraphrase! Look for yourself. Here are Trump’s exact words, in full context, at a White House press briefing Saturday:

I’d like to congratulate all those incredible people that have worked for so long on our endless war in Afghanistan—19 years, going on 20 years…

We’ve had tremendous success in Afghanistan in the killing of terrorists, but it’s time, after all these years, to go and to bring our people back home. We want to bring our people back home.

And, again, it’s been—it’s been a long journey in Afghanistan in particular. It’s been a very long journey. It’s been a hard journey for everybody. We’re very largely a law enforcement group; and that’s not what our soldiers are all about. They’re fighters. They’re the greatest fighters in the world.

As you know, we’ve destroyed, in Syria and Iraq, 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate. One hundred percent. We have thousands of prisoners. We have killed ISIS fighters by the thousands—and, likewise, in Afghanistan.

But now it’s time for somebody else to do that work, and that’ll be the Taliban, and it could be surrounding countries. There are many countries that surround Afghanistan that can help. We’re 8,000 miles away.

So we’ll be bringing it down to 8,000 [U.S. troops], to approximately 8,600 [U.S. troops]—in that vicinity—and then we’ll make our final decision [at] some point in the fairly near future.

But this was a very spirited agreement. There was a lot of—there was a lot of talk. There was a lot of everything. They’ve been trying to get this for many years. And just—it’s time.

So I just want to thank everybody. I want to congratulate everybody. I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show that we’re not all wasting time.

If bad things happen, we’ll go back. I let the people know: We’ll go back and we’ll go back so fast, and we’ll go back with a force like nobody has ever seen. And I don’t think that will be necessary. I hope it’s not necessary.

Yes, Trump talks about going back into Afghanistan; but that presumes we leave altogether first and let things fall apart.

In other words, Trump is determined to get out first and ask the hard questions later: because, in his mind, “it’s time” and we can always go back in if we have to.

Naïveté. This is naive and dangerous talk from the Commander in Chief. Leaving Afghanistan and then going back are not nearly as easy as Trump glibly suggests. And letting Afghanistan fall apart poses a host of dangerous risks to American national security and the American homeland.

Trump’s reckless rhetoric also makes it much more difficult for him to achieve an enduring and sustainable peace agreement with the Taliban. They surely can sense, after all, Trump’s weakness and his palpable desire for a deal, any deal.

On the other hand, we do have 14 months under this agreement before U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan altogether.

A lot can and will happen between now and then. We can only hope and pray that Trump—or his successor—comes to his senses and recognizes the danger and folly of acting out his isolationist fantasies in Afghanistan.

Feature photo credit: Live Science.

This is the second in a three-part series on the coronavirus. In our first post, we assessed the coronavirus as a public health problem. Here we assess the virus as a domestic political dispute.

Is the federal government doing enough to stop the coronavirus? Is Trump handling the problem well? What about Congress? Have they appropriated enough money to combat this latest public health menace?

These are all fair questions, of course. In a representative democracy, we should vigorously debate important matters of public health and public policy.

What confuses and distorts that debate, though, is political opportunism, especially in an election year, when politicians try to exploit the crisis for rank political gain.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen such opportunism from Democratic politicians and their media allies.

Partisan Attacks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for instance, lambasted President Trump for what he called “a premature travel ban to and from China.” The travel ban, Schumer tweeted Feb. 5, 2020, is part of Trump’s “ongoing war against immigrants.”

Trump signed an executive order Jan. 31, 2020, that banned all foreign nationals who had been in China from entering the United States. This was a reasonable preventative measure given that the coronavirus originated in China; and that more than 91 percent of the reported cases thus far are in mainland China.

Indeed, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told MSBC’s Chris Matthews (Friday, Feb. 28, 2020) that the Chinese travel ban “was a very good idea” because it helped to stop the spread of the virus.

Schumer himself seems to have come around to this understandings because, notes Dinesh D’Souza, he has since deleted his tweet.

Still, Schumer’s eagerness to use the coronavirus as a political cudgel with which to beat Trump and the GOP is emblematic of how political considerations are confusing and distorting the public dialogue and debate. As we observed here at ResCon1:

Much of the alarmist commentary that we’re hearing about the coronavirus… is attributable to politicians trying to win votes and media outlets trying to draw in readers and viewers.

That many journalists and media outlets are politically partisan and unabashedly anti-Trump further compounds this problem.

Political Distortion. For example, a reporter at yesterday’s White House press briefing asked Trump if he regretted using the word “hoax” when discussing the coronavirus at a political rally in North Charleston, South Carolina.

“Somebody [in the United States] is now dead from this [virus]. Do you regret using that kind of talk” the reporter solemnly intoned.

Trump explained that he obviously was not using the word hoax to refer to the coronavirus. Instead, he was describing Democratic attacks on him and his administration as a “hoax.”

Democrats have charged Trump with not doing enough to stop the spread of the virus, and Trump said that this is their new “hoax.”

What Trump meant was apparent to anyone who listened to Trump’s remarks. Yet, some journalists, such as CNBC’s Thomas Franck, parroted the Democrats’ charge and reported that Trump was suggesting that the coronavirus itself is a “hoax.”

Democratic presidential candidates, likewise, have charged Trump with “defunding” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Michael Bloomberg) and “wiping out” its budget and the budget of the National Institutes of Health (Joe Biden).

But as the Lauran Neergaard and Calvin Woodward point out in the Associated Press (AP), it’s “wrong to say [that these] agencies have seen their money cut.” It is true that “CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness” have been cut.

However, they note, that funding decline was “set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”

President Trump. In truth, the president appears to be doing a good job handling the coronavirus. He’s requested additional funding from Congress to address the problem, and has said that if Congress wants to provide more money, he’ll take it.

Moreover, with top public health officials in tow, he held two press conferences in three days last week to inform the American people about what, specifically, he and his administration are doing to stop the spread of the virus.

The travel restrictions to and from China have been the most consequential and decisive actions that Trump has taken thus far.

He’s also had American returning from high-risk areas overseas quarantined and monitored by public health officials; declared a public health emergency; and established a White House Coronavirus Task Force now headed by Vice President Mike Pence.

All in all, not bad. What is bad is the shameless and counterproductive politicizing of a problem that should be a nonpartisan or bipartisan concern: public health and the safety and well-being of the American people.

In a democracy, disagreement and debate are perfectly fine. But that disagreement and debate should be factually based and made in good faith. Unfortunately, that too often has not been the case with respect to the coronavirus.

We can and must do better.

Feature photo credit: CNN.