Only days after U.S. President Donald Trump triumphantly announced a big peace deal with the Taliban, the jihadis attacked an Afghan government checkpoint. The U.S. responded by launching an airstrike on those Talibs who it believed were responsible for the attack.
This happened hours after Trump personally spoke on the telephone with a Taliban negotiator to warn him that other post-deal attacks must stop. In fact, according to a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, the Taliban carried out 43 attacks on Monday alone.
This bloody little tempest, which has apparently further emboldened the Taliban, was utterly predictable. It has been thus since U.S. forces threw the Taliban and their al-Qaeda backers out of power months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
The difference now is that Trump has finally decided to end the Forever War. He wants all the troops home before November’s presidential election and must claim it as some kind of victory, even though it is anything but.
What with the railway blockades and grave uncertainties arising from the global coronavirus drama, the peace deal between the White House and the jihadis responsible for the deaths of 158 Canadian soldiers has not received much attention in Canada. However, as I know from many discussions in Ottawa this week, the agreement has been closely watched by many of the tens of thousands of Canadians who served in Afghanistan.
Source: Read Full Article