William Rees, Boroughbridge.
Wednesday, 25th August 2021
On January 3 ,2020, Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general and the driving force behind Iranian-sponsored terrorism, met his death from a pinpoint drone attack ordered by President Trump.
How would President Donald Trump have handled the Afghanistan crisis?On February 29, 2020, the USA and the Taliban announced an agreement whereby the Taliban agreed not to allow any terrorist cells in territory it controlled, while the Americans agreed to pull their forces out of Afghanistan on May 1, 2021.
Trump personally spoke to one of the Taliban leaders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and reminded him of the fate of Soleimani, assuring him that the Americans would give him the same treatment if he failed to comply with the agreement.
From that moment, not a single American member of the armed forces lost his life in Afghanistan.
Army Sergeants 1st Class Javier Gutierrez and Antonio Rodriguez were the last Americans to die in battle in Afghanistan on February 8, 2020.
President Joe Biden's handling of the Afghanistan crisis continues to come under fire.When Joe Biden came to power he changed the proposed date of departure to the symbolic date of 9/11. But, more importantly, the Taliban leaders lost their personal fear of being taken out themselves.
When Biden closed the Bagram air base, taking away air cover from the Afghan army, the game was up. To then see Biden accuse Afghan servicemen of
cowardice, after they had lost 69,000 men in battle, was a disgrace.
Under Trump, the Americans would have left in an orderly fashion on May 1.
They would have evacuated civilians before the military, and I think Trump would have brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, no doubt promising American support for a peaceful outcome.
The Americans would have been spared humiliation and the Afghans would have been left to sort out their own problems, perhaps peacefully, perhaps not, but the Taliban leaders would still have been wary of crossing Donald Trump.
