I hope the president realizes that our military doesn’t know what the hell they are doing in Afghanistan and it is time to cut our losses and get the hell out.
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
I don’t think the American people really want to be handing over a lot of money to Taliban leaders. I’m sure they don’t want to be handing over lots of money to people who are only pretending to the Taliban leaders. We don’t know the players, we don’t understand the game, and we have no clue how to patch the country together. This is not the way to honor or avenge those who lost their lives on 9/11. This is nothing more than an expensive fool’s errand. Usama Bin-Laden is laughing at us every day that we spend chasing our tails in Afghanistan. It’s over. Let’s get out.
