War H.R. McMaster rebukes Trump over Taliban talks

H.R. McMaster rebukes Trump over Taliban talks

The president’s former national security adviser says in a “60 Minutes” interview that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan is an “unwise” policy.

www.politico.com

By MATTHEW CHOI
09/17/2020 07:31 PM EDT

Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster is criticizing President Donald Trump for his administration’s negotiations with the Taliban.
In an interview segment with CBS' “60 Minutes” published on Thursday, McMaster said that moving to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan was an "unwise" policy. The retired Army lieutenant general was discussing his new book, “Battlegrounds,” in which he says Trump “cheapened” the lives of the Americans who died in Afghanistan by making too many concessions to the Taliban, "60 Minutes" reported.

McMaster said during his interview that Trump was “partnering with the Taliban” ahead of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. The Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban go “against, in many ways, the Afghan government,” McMaster said.


“What we require in Afghanistan is a sustained commitment to help the Afghan government,” he said on “60 Minutes.”
A spokesperson for the National Security Council did not immediately offer comment on Thursday evening.
The U.S. signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in February, hoping for the Afghan government to soon follow suit. Under the agreement, the U.S. would withdraw all its troops within 14 months of the signing if the Taliban honored its commitments.
Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban started meeting this month in Doha to discuss their own peace agreement. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Doha this month for the opening of the talks.

McMaster served as Trump’s second national security adviser, from February 2017 to April 2018. Since then, he has voiced criticism of some of his former peers. He criticized the Trump administration in November for moving to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, saying the move would destabilize the region and offer opportunities for Russia to gain greater control in the area.
In May 2019, McMaster said some of his former White House colleagues were a “danger to the Constitution” and were “there to try to manipulate the situation based on their own agenda, not the president’s agenda.”

 

[RodgerDodger]

How much money is the MIC making anyway?

Lockheed Martin just booked the best year in the companies history. Granted a ton of that was from Friendly Foreign Nations falling over themselves to buy F-35's after seeing what it can really do. (after years of the Press trumpeting false claims about the planes lack of capabilities and flaws). Something strange has just recently happened to the US Military Industrial Complex. And I'm not sure where it stands on the scale of good vs bad value for Americans. But I'm actually leaning towards good. Some of the long time seemingly endless projects and cash grabs have suddenly borne fruit and have produced some military tech that is not only game changing, but also astonishingly cost effective. And a lot of it comes back to the long in development integrated Combat Management systems. Or as I like to think of them "Skynet".

The Air Force announced this week that they had begun testing of an actual flying prototype for a new "Next Gen Air Dominance" Fighter "NGAD". This project quietly went from design to flying prototype in slightly over a year. That's unheard of outside of WW2. The suspicion is a lot of the systems developed for the F-35 are modular. So the Cockpit and Computer are the heart of the aircraft. It just views things like Engines, Wings etc as plug in hardware that it controls. So you take the core control system. Quickly build a new airframe with 2 engines. Tell the computer what it's got, and away it goes. That would be a huge game changing level of tech.

Similarly the Army and Air Force just shot down a Cruise Missile using a regular self propelled howitzer. Once again utilizing a ton of assets all linked and controlled via the common Combat Management system. With the old school artillery further boosted by using hypersonic ammo originally developed for the Navy's Rail Gun boondoggles. (What they discovered is while the railguns will fire a special shaped projectile great distances at Mach 7 with incredible precision, the management of the vast electrical power needed and the bug prone maintenance hog railguns is hellish. But they also discovered that those same special rounds that they created for the railgun, also give vast improvements to old school tube fired artillery. The shells will do Mach 5 fired from a howitzer or Naval gun. At an almost negligible cost compared to the Railguns. So in one swoop they've taken Billion's of dollars of existing weapons systems and vastly enhanced them, with minimal costs. Once again game changing tech.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

There's a reason why Afghanistan is called the place where Empires go to die. Its a rocky, desert shithole defended by insane nutjobs and has no territory or resources worth taking besides massive amounts of drugs. It is impossible to prevent insurgencies and gurellia fighting with the terrain unless you fucking genocide the country with MOABs.

Afghanistan provides a strategic foothold into greater South Asia, and that stockpile of drugs can produce quite a pretty sum.

 

[X Prime]

Both of which we were told were impossible by the entire DC establishment. I'm done listening to "experts" on what we should do in the Middle East. Leave the mountainous scrubland that is Afghanistan to its own devices.

As Thomas Frank says in Listen Liberal, "expert" is usually code for "orthodox" when it comes to political topics.

 

[los pepes]

The fucking war went on for 15 years before Trump was elected. If you don't want a Trump to come along and start taking away your toys, maybe don't spend a decade and a half trying to suck your own dick.

 

[The Sauce Boss]

Tell this motherfucker to send his kids to die in the Sandbox and then I'll consider hearing him out.

 

[kcbbq]

Afghanistan provides a strategic foothold into greater South Asia, and that stockpile of drugs can produce quite a pretty sum.

So if we want to start Opium War II we need Afghanistan? Sold.

 

[Snekposter]

The Air Force announced this week that they had begun testing of an actual flying prototype for a new "Next Gen Air Dominance" Fighter "NGAD". This project quietly went from design to flying prototype in slightly over a year. That's unheard of outside of WW2. The suspicion is a lot of the systems developed for the F-35 are modular. So the Cockpit and Computer are the heart of the aircraft. It just views things like Engines, Wings etc as plug in hardware that it controls. So you take the core control system. Quickly build a new airframe with 2 engines. Tell the computer what it's got, and away it goes. That would be a huge game changing level of tech.

Look, OmniFighters are great, but we can't conquer the galaxy without OmniMechs!

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

In 2017, McMaster suggested winning would be allowing the country to “be Afghanistan” rather than trying to “create a state in the U.S. image.”

In other words, allowing the Taliban, the legitimate government of the Pashtun people, to come in, shoot the boy-raping lawbreakers who the American regime has put in power, burn the poppy fields. The North will be alright, their allies can take care of them.

Obviously, he never really believed what he said in 2017.