Jay Kuten: Reality TV and American war and peace

The Afghan war, in its 18th year, is America's longest war.

COMMENT

The byzantine political attitudes of suspicion which prevailed in the late days of Czarist Russia is nowhere better illustrated than in the charge one train passenger levelled at another. "You say you're going to Minsk, so I'll think you're going to Pinsk, but I happen to know you're going to Minsk, so why do you lie?" That's the convoluted thinking that becomes necessary when weighing the nuances of American foreign policy as annunciated by President Donald J. Trump.

Trump, a master of sleight of hand or mind by indirection, and distraction has recently cancelled a purported meeting in the US presidential retreat, Camp David, with the leaders of the Taliban, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The meeting had been described as the culmination of year-long peace talks between the Taliban and US negotiators and would have been a final resolution of America's longest war.

Jay Kuten

As a condition of their participation in those talks, the Taliban had publicly refused to have any representatives of the present Afghan Government present. They regard the Government led by President Ghani as a puppet regime, subservient to the US. In that case, how did it come about that the Camp David meeting was designed to include President Ghani? And how is it that after cancelling the meeting ostensibly because of yet another bombing by the Taliban, Trump fired his national security advisor, John Bolton?

On the surface, these decisions by Trump, however impulsive they seem, deserve kudos. The war is in its 18th year. Its cost along with Iraq's war is $6 trillion. Its human cost in lives lost is 480,000, 244,000 of those, civilians. American and allied military deaths in battle were 6543. And post-war deaths of US veterans by suicide now exceeds 6750, not to mention the number from opioid addiction as a response to PTSD.

Just as terrible is the fact that the war in Afghanistan (which Obama supported) has no rationale, no actual legal basis, no clear reachable objective, and is acknowledged by the US military, itself, to have no credible militarily favourable outcome.

From this perspective, if Trump were actually to end that war as he promised during the 2016 campaign, I'd say give him the Nobel Peace Prize he's so obviously hungry for in his continued competition with President Obama.

The trouble with that wish was twofold. The Taliban and Bolton.

Bolton was and is the "ur"-hawk, pushing for all-out military solutions since the days of Vietnam (so long as it didn't involve personal inconvenience of actual military service). Its his wing of the Republican party which has traditionally labeled any peace moves whether in Vietnam or Iraq or now in Afghanistan as "cut and run." That group is being quietly silenced with this president's moves to withdraw and Bolton's discharge.

There's also an uncanny resemblance to the Vietnam peace initiative. It's been reported* that during his 1968 presidential campaign, candidate Richard Nixon, sent Madame Anna Chenault to "monkey wrench" President Lyndon Johnson's peace talks with the North Vietnamese by having South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu refuse to go along with the proposed plan, claiming Johnson would sacrifice Thieu's interest to get to peace. Of course, five years later, Nixon did just that, sacrifice Thieu, to get the North to agree to peace and an "honorable withdrawal."

Ignoring or forgetting history lets successive US administrations create their own narratives. It's pretty clear that by agreeing to talks with the Taliban without the participation of the Afghan Government that Trump and his negotiators were preparing to gain their orderly withdrawal at costs that included the present Afghan Government.

Trump, wanted nothing more than the photo-op of himself holding hands with both the Taliban leader and President Ghani. It did not suit the Taliban to become a willing prop and they refused to go along. Trump had no choice but to save face and claim he was the one who cancelled. Just as he fired Bolton the day after Bolton offered to resign.