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Afghanistan
HR McMaster Calls Trump's Afghan Policy a 'Travesty'
2020-10-21
[ToloNews] The Washington Post reports that HR McMaster, a retired general and former national security adviser, has publicly said that Trump’s Afghanistan policy is a "travesty," and that his deal with the Taliban
...Arabic for students...
 is similar to Europe’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler
...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days as a politician somebody doesn't like...
 in the Munich agreement of 1938.

McMaster was promoting his new book during an online event hosted Thursday by the Alexander Hamilton Society, a nonprofit foreign policy network, and he told the audience that by making a deal with the Taliban, Trump has now betrayed the mission, undermined US security and undermined the US's Afghan partners, the Washington Post reported.

By dealing with the Taliban, the US had also cancelled out it's motivation for the war, McMaster said, saying Trump’s strategy "renders the war unjust, because we no longer have defined a just end."

"It’s just a travesty," said McMaster. "We will pay the price, and we’ll be back. We’ll have to go back, and at a much higher cost."

"War is a contest of wills. And we have to have the will ourselves to prevail," McMaster said.

Gabriel Scheinmann, executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, asked McMaster: "Is this our Munich agreement? Are we pursuing a policy of appeasement with Taliban?"

"Yes, yes, we are," McMaster said
Related:
HR McMaster: 2018-02-10 Trump orders Pentagon to ready 'FATHER OF ALL BOMBS' for use against North Korea
HR McMaster: 2018-01-28 Coalition: We will continue to stay in Manbij 'until told otherwise'
HR McMaster: 2017-12-17 HR McMaster condemns Turkey and Qatar as prime sponsors of Islamist ideology.
Posted by:trailing wife

#30  "we call them cowboys".

Recalling now, it was because of their black turbans.
Posted by: Woodrow   2020-10-21 23:14  

#29  Delightful, Zenobia F!
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-10-21 22:27  

#28  I balanced the world on my nose
And saluted the sun as it rose,
Though I rather thought Sol
Should've answered the call
I'd have made were I wearing his clothes...
Dammit, dawn, do not step on my toes!
Posted by: Betty Crimble7900   2020-10-21 22:04  

#27  Remember when the left was screeching about the wars in the middle east while Bush was president? Good times, good times...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-21 18:18  

#26  A travesty for whom? The banksters?
Posted by: JohnQC   2020-10-21 17:51  

#25  Pretty much the only scenario where you don't hear lefties whining "if it saves just one life..."
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-21 17:09  

#24  I was wondering when the Military Industrial Complex would raise it ugly head and whine about pulling out of Afghanistan a $700+Billion a year war. A war going no where, while playing policeman at the cost if US GI lives.
Posted by: NoBody   2020-10-21 16:26  

#23   bussed direction

...directly. *sigh*
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-10-21 16:22  

#22  They didn’t tear the old Omni international Complex, Ted moved CNN in and later bought the building and renamed it.

They did tear down the Omni that was adjacent and that’s State Farm Arena now
Posted by: Beavis   2020-10-21 16:09  

#21  @#11, Hey Raj.
Here's a Pufnstuf factoid for ya.
The Krofft bros, creators of Pufnstuf etc., built a theme park of their characters in Atlanta. All the favorites were there. It closed mid '70s and was abandoned.
It's the block they bulldozed and then built CNN headquarters on.
(I think something seeped into the ground...)
Posted by: ed in texas   2020-10-21 15:31  

#20   Former top Navy SEAL who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid says he voted for Joe Biden 'because black lives matter and climate change is real'

A nice demonstration of the fallacy that a person’s mastery in one area confers his mastery in all others.

First of all the Talibunnies were from other countries. The Afghans told me, "we call them cowboys". Interesting description. They didn't particularly like them.

Fascinating, Woodrow. To be sure, much of the cannon fodder is bussed direction from graduation in a Pakistani madrassah to whichever Talib unit they were (presumably) sold to, with gun instruction presumably given during the bus ride.
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-10-21 15:03  

#19  The entire idea is for the US to use our wealth to conquer the entire world. We will then involuntarily surrender our sovereignty to a global governance. This new governance will, for the next few centuries, export the wealth of the former territory of the USA for the benefit of hostile peoples. Mcmaster is at the center of this. What other excuse justifies American meddling in Afghanistan?
Posted by: Elmung Hatrack5948   2020-10-21 13:46  

#18  First of all the Talibunnies were from other countries. The Afghans told me, "we call them cowboys". Interesting description. They didn't particularly like them.

My 2 cents, HR is correct, to a point. But to what end? In the meantime the CHICOMs are moving in to mine the rare metals.
Posted by: Woodrow   2020-10-21 13:23  

#17  49Pan's Law:
McMaster will never turn that p[l]ace into a respectable nation, ever.

Corollary #1
Nobody will turn that place into a respectable nation, ever.

Corollary #2
Nobody will turn that place into a nation, ever.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2020-10-21 12:11  

#16  He does not understand. We can seal that place off, go in occasionally and kill bad guys, and not waste our national treasures of money and lives in the shithole that has not desire to enter the 19th century. Why spend American treasure on this place, when they spark up, send in the B52s. Mcmasters will never turn that pace into a respectable nation, ever.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2020-10-21 10:43  

#15  15 people are trampled to death, including 11 women, as thousands wait in Afghanistan to collect visas to enter Pakistan
Posted by: Skidmark   2020-10-21 10:38  

#14  'The world no longer looks up to America': Former top Navy SEAL who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid says he voted for Joe Biden 'because black lives matter and climate change is real'
Posted by: Skidmark   2020-10-21 10:00  

#13  McMaster was a good battlefield commander. But he, like all of those officers, were brought up with the US being the world policeman and most of their career from 1991-2014 was with the training and expectation the US had to be the one keeping order and the Bretton Woods agreement would spread wealth and democracy throughout the world.

Reality has proven otherwise. Countries got rich off the US and corrupt businessmen and politicians have let our manufacturing might be almost completely siphoned off. China and other countries became much more authoritarian and are now the US's major adversaries.

He sees the US leaving as a vacuum where terrorists will once again take root and start attacking our allies and the US homeland again.
It may happen, it may not. I see it as more likely it won't now that arabs are normalizing relations with Israel. Where he sees fear and comes at the issue with 20th century thinking, the battlefield has moved past that and I think Trump does understand it. Keeping troops there and dumping trillions of dollars every year isn't going to fix the issue.
War is a contest of wills and you have to hit the centers of power. This can be done at the ideological level and the peace agreement is the start. McMaster is an outdated General still fighting the last war.
Posted by: DarthVader   2020-10-21 09:59  

#12  H.R. McMaster, H.R. Pufnstuf - just sayin'...
Posted by: Raj   2020-10-21 09:25  

#11  Yeah... if he keeps it up we might end up not in any wars! That would be a travesty!
Posted by: CrazyFool   2020-10-21 08:36  

#10  re: MM

I agree that sunsetting everything could be the way to go. Frustration breeds the knock it all down and build from scratch mindset.

I don't agree that things couldn't get worse.
Posted by: AlanC   2020-10-21 08:30  

#9  ...similar to Europe’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler

Gee, you'd think he would have used Champ's sellout to Iran as more appropriate...no, wait.
Posted by: Mercutio   2020-10-21 08:29  

#8  McMaster was promoting his new book....

What, not a Sunday morning regular on MSNBS? Not on the board of Lockheed-Martin or Boeing or Rayethon? What a shame.
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-21 08:18  

#7  have passed / are passed. I'm off to a slow start...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-21 08:12  

#6  I'm beginning to think the days of merit retention have past. Term limit everyone. Sunset every law and institution. Anything is better than the encrusted mediocrity, log-rolling and self-dealing we have now.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-21 07:39  

#5  Globalist. No, the defense of America is not trying to defend everything any place in the world. Fredrick the Great is attributed with the statement - he who defends everything defends nothing. You have limited resources, cause someday someone is going to stop taking the toilet paper the Treasury keeps issuing. There is no 'winning' strategy anymore, only 'avoid losing'.

The promotion rate absent active military operations is really low, eh?

That is part of the problem. They kept the peacetime promotion system during wartime. War is the ultimate test of a leader and it should have been reflected in throwing out bureaucratic boards and reviews and time in command with promotions and selections based upon performance in the field. The HR desk bound types always cry equity and fairness. Combat is not fair or equitable. They'd be picking combat commanders not people who got their institutional card punched towards promotion.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-10-21 07:35  

#4  McMaster was promoting his new book

Whore.

"War is a contest of wills. And we have to have the will ourselves to prevail," McMaster said.

Yup. Triumph of The Will: that's the ticket.

Any day, er, year, ah decade now. Victory is right around the corner. What's 19 years in the bigger scheme of things?
Posted by: Bigfoot Angetle6961   2020-10-21 04:34  

#3  What IS our end in Afghanistan? As far as I know, it's an open-ended commitment to keep troops in Central Asia where they can harass Chinese lines of communication and stay near Pakistan's nuclear weapons in case we need to attack them.
Posted by: Muggsy Hapsburg5230   2020-10-21 04:15  

#2  Since the enemy was really pakistan will McMaster be advocating invading pakland as well?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-10-21 04:10  

#1  The promotion rate absent active military operations is really low, eh?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-21 03:56  

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