With the coronavirus and bad poll numbers dogging pathological liar and con man Donald "Cheat-o" Trump, today's announcement of a "peace deal" with the murderous Taliban will certainly be fluffed to the max by Trump, his media lackeys and his cult (and likely some gullible Beltway media). Not so fast. As conservative foreign policy expert Max Boot explains, the deal isn't much of a deal at all:
"It has been heartening to see a steep reduction in violence over the past week — a U.S. precondition for signing the deal — but there is no agreement on a permanent cease-fire, much less a resolution of all the issues that divide the democratically elected Afghan government from the Taliban. What was signed on Saturday is an agreement to try to reach an agreement. To get even this far, the United States had to drop its long-standing demand for intra-Afghan negotiations to precede a U.S. troop drawdown. Now the Taliban will enter the talks, scheduled to take place in Oslo, in a stronger position after having already achieved their chief demand — a timetable for U.S. withdrawal within 14 months." (our emphasis)Boot goes on to describe three possible scenarios, the ugliest of which is the most likely:
"The ugly scenario would look like South Vietnam. The 1973 Paris Peace Accords brought an end to the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam, but North Vietnam began violating its terms at once. Two years later, the weakened state of South Vietnam was overrun by a North Vietnamese blitzkrieg. America’s abandoned allies had to flee or be consigned to brutal 'reeducation' camps."No one should be shocked that an ignorant narcissist fighting for his political (and, post-election legal) survival would spin this shaky deal as a "win" to his cult. His only goal is to claim a "win", regardless of the likely consequences to follow, which he's clueless about. He'll lie about it anyway.
In his simplistic and narcissistic way, he thought he could march in and schmooze an agreement for denuclearization with North Korea's cunning Kim Jong Un, only to have been played by Kim like a cheap fiddle (and after "falling in love" with the tyrant, too). If Boot's ugly scenario is realized and the Taliban reimpose their religious tyranny on the people of Afghanistan, they will have Trump to blame.
