Yes, it’s true! Or maybe it is, as Donald Trump would say. Who knows? Tune in next week!
Indeed, the agreement signed between the U.S. and the Taliban contains a lot of if thens and if whens. As Adam Wunische, over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explains, in his article “The U.S.–Taliban Deal is Not A Military Withdrawal; It Should Be”, the agreement has a lot of moving parts that may not move. And, in fact, President Trump is developing a long record of non-withdrawal withdrawals. So believe it when you see it.
On the other hand, almost anything that upsets Eli Lake is jake with me, and Eli is definitely upset: “Why the Taliban Is Celebrating Trump’s Peace Plan”. Eli recognizes that Trump is at least playing to U.S. weariness with the pointless Afghan War, and such “weakness”, aka “common sense”, is inherently anathema to old Eli. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said old Thomas Jefferson. But old Eli would prefer to have it, “Eternal war is the tool for tying U.S. policy to Likudist interests,”1 which is not quite the same thing—to my eyes, at least.
Getting back to old Barack Obama, it’s very true that Obama was poised to withdraw U.S. troops back in 2014, when the emergence of ISIS—a godsend to Eli and his ilk—blew up the possibility of anything remotely resembling common sense in foreign policy. But Barack should have set his face against the war in Afghanistan from the first, instead of championing it as the “good war.” Barack had a real compulsion for regime change and intervention, despite his constant reputation as the “thoughtful” one, the “tell me how this thing ends” one, a question he doesn’t seem to have asked in either Libya or Syria.
The intervention in Libya was a double disaster, disastrous in itself and disastrous in its effect on Vladimir Putin, who became convinced (though perhaps he didn’t need much convincing) that only he could save Mother Russia from the berserk Yankee colossus. Despite all the “victim of the Blob” propaganda being generated by the self-promoting Ben Rhodes, it was Obama who filled his government with both liberal and conservative interventionists, and all too often gave them free rein.
If we had stayed out of Libya, Hillary Clinton would be president. She would be beset by a concordance of howling banshees, also known as the Republican Party. With some good luck—a lot of it, no doubt—they would scream themselves hoarse. With some bad luck, they would bring her down and replace her with, yes, Donald Trump, in 2020. But at least that wouldn’t have happened yet, which would be no small measure of relief.
1. I say “Likudist” rather than “Israeli”, because, to my goyish eyes, Benjamin Netanyahu and his party, while quite popular in Israel, are severely damaging that country’s long-term interests.
