Forget the art of the deal, President Trump is bent on pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and ending America's longest war before the election.
On Saturday, after 19 years of war, the United States and the Taliban began what both sides delicately called a seven-dayin Afghanistan, a trial attempt at a partial truce. If the experiment works, they have set Feb. 29 for a ceremony to sign an agreement that would launch broader peace negotiations.
According to their accounts, the deal calls for the United States to trim its troop presence from about 12,000 to 8,600 by July — and later, if all goes well, to zero. Or as the Taliban put it in a statement Friday, the deal would lead to “the withdrawal of all foreign forces … so that our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the shade of an Islamic system.”
That hasn’t happened. Sen. Lindsey Graham and other Republican hawks are already grumbling about trusting the Taliban and the folly, in their view, of reducing troops below 8,600. And allowing the Taliban to win a share of power — or potentially dominate the government in Kabul — will diminish whatever hope remains of helping Afghanistan become a recognizable democracy.
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