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Excellent share, thank you.

Haha safe trip Sir

Alright, so if you watch the news, you'll see this whole peace deal with the Taliban coming up. Some people are unhappy that we've negotiated with the Taliban because they are "the bad guys."

Two ways to look at this.

1. Afghanistan is not "winnable." We are never going to be able to dump enough money and resources into Afghanistan to militarily defeat the Taliban. We'd have to go into every surrounding nation and defeat them there as well - and even then, they'd be back. This peace deal is our best bet to get out of Afghanistan (for the most part) with something besides an obvious "loss." Negotiating with the Taliban, and letting them keep their name, and integrating them into the legitimate Afghan government is a viable solution to the problem. We get to claim victory because we have peace with the Taliban and everyone is working together for a peaceful and successful Afghanistan. The Taliban get to be a part of the government and become a part of the process that stops OTHER groups from getting stronger - IE ISIS. They are already fighting ISIS in Afghanistan, why not formalize the deal and call it a day?

2. We ALREADY won Afghanistan back in 2011 when OBL was killed. THAT was the military mission in Afghanistan before we came in. The Taliban had him, we wanted him, and we wanted him on our terms, not theirs (which was pretty much, "Hey, can we see your evidence, and then we'll turn him over for prosecution"). We killed him in 2011. Mission Accomplished. Time to pack it up and go home.... BUT, we couldn't do that, because we stepped in this HUGE mess, and so, have a responsibility to clean it up. This peace deal is our way to put a tidy (if somewhat scragly) bow on top and bring our troops home with a win.

The problem for the US was NEVER the "Taliban." The Taliban didn't blow up buildings on 9-11. That was Al-Qaeda. It wasn't Afghan citizens who hijacked planes - it was Saudis. Yes, the Taliban let Al-Qaeda hang out and train in Afghanistan. The Taliban were crappy people who abused their families and neighbors. But, THAT wasn't a problem for the US until 9-11 (and again, not even really then, not until they didn't give up OBL).

This peace deal gives the Afghan government a chance to protect the human rights the Taliban don't want to protect and it gives the Taliban a chance to have some legitimacy - albeit without restrictions on how shitty they can be. We the Taliban follow through? Will they keep figting the government? Will they go back to being extra-shitty? Maybe. But we have given the Afghan people their BEST CHANCE to own their country and do what they want with it. At some point, we have to hand them the keys to the car, and let them drive. Now is as good a time as any.