US Airstrikes in Afghanistan Soared During Peace Talks

In the course of abandoning the Afghan peace process, President Trump in particular singled out a Taliban car bombing, saying the Taliban weren’t willing to cease firing during the talks and “would even kill 12 innocent people.”

A new report on US airstrikes, however, shows that the US wasn’t ceasing fire either. Indeed, during this exact same critical time in the peace process, the US was escalating airstrikes in Afghanistan, launching more than at any time this year.

The US launched 810 airstrikes in August, mostly against the Taliban. Mike Pompeo suggested last week that the US had killed around 1,000 Taliban fighters in the course of 10 days.

Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

….an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

….only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

All of this suggests that while President Trump was faulting the Taliban for trying to build “false leverage” with attacks during the talks, the US was doing the exact same thing on an even grander scale, escalating the attacks during the talks.

This makes condemning the Taliban and ditching the peace process hypocritical, and probably puts the US position in an even worse light.

Source: Antiwar.com