As self-acknowledging “suckers and losers,” all active and former military members supporting Trump are betraying the million men and women who made the “ultimate sacrifice.” It is disconcerting that so many of them are willing to overlook one of many critical flaws in a narcissistic megalomaniac who couldn’t care less about them.
They should also know that Trump is the first American president to overtly surrender to an adversary during a period of conflict. They seem ignorant of the facts that form the basis of the Doha Agreement that Trump had Zal Khalilzad negotiate with the Taliban on his behalf. Betraying our Afghan allies, Trump’s negotiators entered the discussions without including the very people who would have to carry on with the governance of the country.
The agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, was if U.S. forces stopped attacking the Taliban, they would not attack our troops. It also included a departure date by which all U.S. and NATO forces would be out of the country. That was/is in effect, surrender.
The comprehensive title of the documents was “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America.” Bringing peace to Afghanistan: what a joke. Just ask all of the women and girls in Afghanistan how much “peace” they are enjoying today.
Signed on 29 February 2020, the agreement required all allied forces to be out of Afghanistan in 14 months, a date that insured the next U.S. President would have to deal with the outcome. Part One of the Agreement states, “The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.” In other words, “We surrender.” Those are the terms that Donald Trump agreed to. This also meant ending all of the technical support to Afghan forces. Critically, it removed the maintenance support that was keeping aircraft in the air, thus depriving ground forces of much needed air cover and resupply capabilities.
After surrendering Trump even agreed to rebuild the country. Part Three of the Agreement states, “The United States will seek economic cooperation for reconstruction with the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations, and will not intervene in its internal affairs.” To be clear, both the U.S. negotiators, and the Taliban knew who would constitute the following government. They knew it would not be the allies they left so conspicuously out of the talks as they gave the country away. To be clear, not only did Trump agree to surrender, but he also agreed to pay for restoration.
Notably, after losing the election, Trump’s allies attempted to accelerate the departure. Without the knowledge of the senior Department of Defense officials, an executive order was drafted ordering all American forces out of Afghanistan before President Biden was sworn in. If you think the withdrawal in August 2021 was chaotic, imagine what it would have been like if Trump had his way.
The context is important. During the 19 March 2024 Congressional hearings on the withdrawal, General Milley noted that the blundered operation was the result of the lack of planning and delays by the State Department. Earlier he had noted the “U.S. lost war in Afghanistan through miscalculations spanning multiple administrations.” The lack of coordination was abundantly obvious in 2003 and did not seem to improve over time. In 2021 it was literally a fatal flaw.
Among the major complaints from MAGA supporters is the amount of military equipment that was left for the Taliban. Here ignorance abounds as they have no concept as to the time and resources it would have taken to retrograde the massive amount of materiel that has been shipped into Afghanistan over the two decades of war.
Some personal observations are in order as I am not unbiased. In late 2003 I was a contractor in Kabul and the officious sounding job title was, “mentor to the Minister of Defence.” At that time the Minister was Fahim Khan, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley, who had led the Northern Alliance mujahidin during the Soviet period. My time was before the first loya jirga and the government was just being formed. For anyone who might recognize names, I also dealt with Bismillah, then-Army Chief of Staff, Wardak, who later became the minister of Defence, Karimi, then-Army Deputy Chief of Operations (and would later replace Bismillah) and other top level MOD officials. It was clear to me in just a few weeks, that “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men” would not put Afghanistan back together again. It was already obvious that Marshal Fahim was a mega-crook. Even so, he would go on to become a vice president under Hamid Karzai. Notably, Qayum Karzai, Hamid’s older brother, was quite helpful to me.
My detractors have already made claims that “my war” (I was a Special Forces commander during the Vietnam War) was also lost. However, there was a significant difference in that it was not President Richard Nixon who surrendered to the North Vietnamese, but rather Congressional action that cut the funding. That resulted in the Paris Peace Accords which were designed to bring “Peace with honor.” There is enough guilt and recrimination to go around regarding the American failure in Vietnam. That is another story. Importantly, no president surrendered to the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Government.
For those who want to go back to the Korean War, remember the United States was part of the United Nations forces. It was another war we did not win but did not lose. Importantly, neither President Truman, who was in office during most of that period, nor President Eisenhower who assumed office in January 1953, offered to surrender (nor would they have had that authority) That conflict ended on 27 July 1953 with a negotiated armistice. While the fighting stopped, the war never formally ended. Of course, it was Trump who elevated Kim Jong Un on the international stage and praised the dictator who continued his nuclear weapons development as “smart,” “funny” and “a great negotiator.”
Unfortunately, the Democrats appear to have ceded the departure from Afghanistan to Trump and his GOP cult members. There is no need to do that. While everyone agrees the retrograde operation could have been executed far better, it was Trump who surrendered to the Taliban. While Trump, and the GOP talk about support for, and “rebuilding the military,” it was Trump who takes a unique and dishonorable place in American history as the first, and only POTUS to surrender to an adversary.
