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Afghanistan
US Was Losing War So It Negotiated: Khalilzad
2021-10-25
[ToloNews] The former US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad said the US was losing the war to the Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
 so it chose peace negotiations deal as an alternative.

Talking to CBS News, Khalilzad said the US military tried many times to strengthen its position on the battleground, but it failed. "The negotiation was a result of--based on the judgment that we weren’t winning the war and therefore time was not on our side and better to make a deal sooner than later."

Khalilzad blamed the then-president Ashraf Ghani
...former chancellor of Kabul University, ex-president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. When Biden abandoned the country left with a helicopter, four cars, and part of the national treasury...
 for the disintegration of Afghanistan’s security sector, saying his escape triggered the chaos in the Afghan capital.
That seems an incomplete way of looking at it...
He said the Taliban was in discussions with him about forming a power-sharing government and including some officials of the Ghani administration in the next government. All these things did not happen because Ghani did not stay, he said.

Khalilzad said Ghani did not want to let go of power, and discredited Ghani's remarks about fleeing Kabul to avoid bloodshed, saying they were not true. "So, the question is, why did President Ghani do what he did? If he was willing to step aside for the sake of peace, imagine if he had offered that a year ago, six months ago -- that somebody that's mutually acceptable could have led the government. But he did not," he said.
There was nobody mutual, since the Taliban would accept no one not their own. They were in it for the reconquest.
According to Khalilzad, the US has largely succeeded in suppressing Al Qaeda- the reason it went to Afghanistan--but has failed in building a democratic Afghanistan.
No, the Afghans failed to build democracy despite two decades of aid and support. Horses and water, donchaknow.
He said the two decades of US involvement has transformed Afghanistan and now "the Taliban are going to have a hard time putting them back in the box the way they had put people in the 1990s."
Hopefully true. Possibly wishful thinking.
Khalilzad said the US wanted a different outcome for the Afghan peace talks, preferably a power-sharing government with the Taliban instead of what happened on August 15.
That was definitely wishful thinking.
Khalilzad said the Taliban has lived up to its promise of cutting ties with terrorist groups
...for a given value of cutting that means binding more firmly...
and not allowing Afghanistan to be used for staging attacks against the US and its allies. "They are not allowing plotting and planning operations by al-Qaeda against the United States," he said.
But what happens despite their forbidding is clearly not their responsibility, or even interest, right? Nor anything at all by anyone not Al Qaeda, since not-Al Qaeda isn’t being forbidden anything...
According to Khalilzad, if the Islamic Emirate does not form an inclusive government and does not respect the rights of Afghans, the relationship between Afghanistan and the US will not become normal.
A terrifying threat for a Dark Ages culture, to be sure.
Khalilzad also warned of a possible civil war if the Afghan economy collapses. He said if the "Taliban don't move toward more inclusiveness, respecting the rights of the Afghan people, and then honoring their commitment to us on terrorism; there will be no move towards normality and there shouldn't be. There should be no release of funds. So their economy could collapse and in that collapse a new civil war could start."
What was their reconquest if not a civil war for the last decade or so?
Khalilzad said Afghanistan has many problems, and the US should help it come to an agreement on a formula that is acceptable by urban and rural Afghans, and by secular and religious Afghans, to end troubles in the country.
‘Taint no sech thing, Buddy Boy. And so the troubles will not end.
Related:
Zalmay Khalilzad: 2021-10-19 US envoy to Afghanistan Khalilzad RESIGNS amid reports of upcoming State Department probe into botched Kabul withdrawal operation
Zalmay Khalilzad: 2021-09-12 Ugh: Khalilzad is grateful to Taliban, Qatar for facilitating international flights from Kabul
Zalmay Khalilzad: 2021-09-10 Taliban agreed to allow 200 foreigners to leave Afghanistan, Kabul airport ready in days
Posted by:trailing wife

#19  
No, the Afghans failed to build democracy despite two decades of aid and support. Horses and water, donchaknow.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can't lead the other end of a horse anywhere at all.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843   2021-10-25 23:07  

#18  /\ Forget the money. How about everyone in the grade of GG-14 and above just fok'n resign on Friday.
Posted by: Besoeker   2021-10-25 20:34  

#17  I think the GOPe, CIA and Pentagon owe the American people about $3 trillion in reparations. Start by pauparizing the Boosh and Cheney famblies into the second decade of the 25th century.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2021-10-25 18:35  

#16  Of course, in the interest of not breaking any domestic rice bowls, the cash distribution would be accomplished by the LockheedRaytheonGD Hypersonic Cash Dispenser, which can deliver a bundle of $20's to Abdul's Flower Shop with unerring accuracy. Yours for only $2.2 trillion.
Posted by: Matt   2021-10-25 14:08  

#15  The deal-points here are (1) the Talibs as Mike K points out are now desperate for US cash and (2) the Biden regime needs the Talibs to be nice guys after all, because that makes the Kabul Katastrophe look somewhat better in advance of the mid-terms. So, a couple of months of no-beheadings and the cash flow resumes. (And Khalilzad will generously offer to administer the cash distributions.) The memorandum of understanding has probably already been drafted.
Posted by: Matt   2021-10-25 13:29  

#14  We've been trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear for twenty years trying to find Pashtuns who aren't on Pakistan's side.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2021-10-25 12:55  

#13  There never was a definition for "winning" in Afghanistan. I guess you could call that lack "losing" but it's a stretch.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843   2021-10-25 11:51  

#12  #10 consider it a Lesson Unlearned

[got to remember these are the same elites that now think you can print an unlimited amount of money and there will be no destructive inflation]
Posted by: Procopius2k   2021-10-25 11:28  

#11  "cutting ties with terrorist groups"
Well, they did. They cut out the middle men.
Posted by: ed in texas   2021-10-25 11:08  

#10  re #6 excuse me, you would have thought they would have learnt that in Vietnam P2k
Posted by: Chris   2021-10-25 10:37  

#9  Instead of admitting there is no way to square the circle in a primitive Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad is whining, "it's not my fault."
Posted by: Bertie Crains2651   2021-10-25 10:17  

#8  There was always the alternative of bombing Afghanistan further back into the Stone Age.
Posted by: JohnQC   2021-10-25 09:28  

#7  “War means fighting, and fighting means killing.”
― Nathan Bedford Forrest
Posted by: irish rage boy   2021-10-25 09:16  

#6  you would have thought that in Vietnam P2k.
Posted by: Chris   2021-10-25 08:09  

#5  As long as you allow your enemy a base of operations free from interdiction or destruction there is no way to 'win'.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2021-10-25 07:54  

#4  There was nobody mutual, since the Taliban would accept no one not their own. They were in it for the reconquest.

TW,

Absolutely true, ma'am. But on the other hand, one can make an argument that the Talib might have outsmarted themselves: since the economy there was utterly and completely dependent on US dollars to function, they are looking at a level of financial crash so apocalyptic that even the Talib are stunned, with no guarantee that the rest of the world will make up for that in anything like the numbers needed. But - they had the military advantage, and they used it.

You have to wonder though if there isn't some turban in Kabul right now who's wondering what would have happened if they had stopped outside of Kabul and the major cities, and then launched a peace offensive - "Hey, we're the new, improved Taliban; we're nice guys and we've seen the light, We don't want to tear the place up, come on and talk to us, and bring your media. Let's talk about a peaceful transfer of power, say in ninety days or so."

If they had done something even close to that, would the Biden Administration have sent the troops back in? Maybe, but there would have been a lot of screaming about it, and all it would have taken to derail it would have been a couple of suicide bombers. And once it was all over, with speeches and handshakes at the airport, and the Talib reverted to their true stripes, would we have done anything? Damned unlikely.

Mike

Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2021-10-25 06:13  

#3  Excellent in-line comments.

"Peace negotiations as an alternative"

Translation:

Formerly referred to as "terms of surrender."
Posted by: Besoeker   2021-10-25 05:20  

#2  Doubt the K-man was on the American side. Nice gig, if you can get it, to be paid large sums by your enemy to stab him in the back.
Posted by: Blinky Angineng2040   2021-10-25 04:02  

#1  The definition of "winning" changed from day to day...
Posted by: magpie   2021-10-25 03:55  

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