{"id":115309,"date":"2019-02-01T13:33:27","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T17:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=115309"},"modified":"2019-02-01T13:34:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T17:34:23","slug":"why-are-administration-officials-trying-to-talk-trump-out-of-the-afghan-peace-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=115309","title":{"rendered":"Why are administration officials trying to talk Trump out of the Afghan peace process?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officials Try to Talk Trump Out of Afghan Peace Deal<\/h1>\n

Pentagon wants to stay in Afghanistan<\/h3>\n

Jason Ditz
\nAntiwar.com<\/p>\n

After December\u2019s announcement of a planned US pullout from Syria sparked a flurry of condemnations from hawks and mainstream media, it should come as little surprise that the reports of the\u00a0US nearing a peace deal in Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0are going the same way.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times prefaces its article<\/a>\u00a0by presenting peace as meaning \u201cdeparting Americans would end up handing over the country to the same ruthless militants that the United States went to war to dislodge.\u201d They then heavily quote unnamed experts opposing such a deal.<\/p>\n

These sort of policy reports always come plenty of official support. In this case, Trump\u2019s national security aides and the Pentagon leadership are both vehemently opposed to ending the war, and are trying to scare Trump out of making peace under any circumstances.<\/p>\n

The argument is that even though the Taliban have already agreed to keep al-Qaeda and ISIS out f Afghanistan, there might conceivably be a terror attack on the US after a pullout, \u201cand Mr. Trump would shoulder the blame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underpinning all of this is what the Pentagon wants, which is what the Pentagon always wants, to stay. Officials say the Pentagon wants to keep a \u201ccounter-terrorism force\u201d in Afghanistan after the war.<\/p>\n

Which is as good as saying there won\u2019t be an end to the war. The US already broached the idea of keeping a base, and the Taliban nearly withdraw from the talks entirely over it. Such a deal is a non-starter, and everyone knows it, which is why it\u2019s being pushed hard by those opposed to a deal.<\/p>\n

As always, the reports are meant to give the illusion of consensus about not ending the war, quoting a handful of Obama-era officials and a lot of unnamed \u201cexperts\u201d by way of arguing that the war must continue. 17+ years is not enough for them.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2019\/01\/28\/officials-try-to-talk-trump-out-of-afghan-peace-deal\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials Try to Talk Trump Out of Afghan Peace Deal Pentagon wants to stay in Afghanistan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}