Special Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy Ambassador Hugo Llorens in a statement Tuesday urged the Afghan government to deal with widespread corruption, make good on a promise to hold parliamentary polls next year and enact tough economic reforms.
He also called on Afghanistan’s leadership to shed their ethnic differences and embrace each other.
Trump has not yet appointed a new ambassador to Kabul.
Italics supplied; because they’re about as much use as these pieties from the charge’. The last line rather neatly sums it all up. Sorry, Mr. “President”, this changes nothing. Now, about those tax returns…
I’d qualify that headline. "Some Afghans…” Abdullah Abdullah “Afghanistan’s second most powerful official” is a cross-cultural person, son of a Tajik mom and a Pashto dad, and speaking Farsi.
So Trump’s Paki-bashing now…
Typical behavior for a Skinhead.
Squirrelly cover-up notwithstanding.
As an old guy who remembers Nixon waging a secret war in Cambodia for the reason that they were supporting the Viet Cong, and remembering how well that turned out, hearing Trump go after Pakistan gave me deja vu goose bumps.
We continue to wage war against an idea, and you cannot kill an idea by killing more and more people. For Trump to lead the U.S. in violence against any country, idea, or person, automatically puts us on the losing side because of who Trump is and what he represents to the rest of the world - both our allies and our enemies. The dictators and strong men of the world have already figured out how to use Trump the same way the Republicans use him at home - as an occasionally useful idiot.
Is ANYBODY surprised that Trump’s “New Way Forward in Afghanistan” is nothing more than a DICK-WAVING EXERCISE?
Vague promises, accusing Pakistan of being “disloyal” (duh! they CREATED the Taliban) and just enough US Troops to get a bunch more of them killed.
All I can hear when I listen to this fool is “Nixon Invading Cambodia” and we all know how well that turned out.
What is it with Tiny-Trump rattling sabres at countries that have Nuclear Weapons?
Talk is cheap, as a wise man once noted. Trump didn’t even offer any concrete ideas, he just spouted slogans about “winning.” More bullshit from the master con artist, I ain’t buying it. How many more young soldiers have to risk their lives in that quagmire?
That Pakistan is a enabler, or even an sponsor of terrorism is a well known fact. The problem is that no Pakistani government can rein in the military intelligence agency ISI (even the acronym) which is full of fundamentalists and revanchists.
Trump can tell the Pakistanis what he wants them to do, that they are going to do it is a different story. And if they refuse then what? We are not going to invade a nuclear armed country. We could take away the military aid, but that will hurt the US Defense Industry more than it hurts the Pakistanis, and the US Military-Industrial complex has a very low threshold for pain. That is the reason that is has not been done, even if ISI has been major troublemaker for at least 30 years.
I still can’t believe anyone thought it was a good idea to hand over this war or any other to a real estate developer. To me, that simply does not make any kind of sense.
Well, its his war now…tRump’s War. You think he’ll even bother to greet the caskets of fallen soldiers when they’re flown into Dover Air Force Base? Just so we’re clear, someone might want to inform him its not really the same as the Kennedy Center Honors or the White House Correspondence Dinner when it comes to his primary responsibilities as Pr*sident…but its proper protocol nonetheless.
Broken clock and all, but I have never understood our “partnership” with Pakistan. Yes, I know it is historical because India cosied up to the Soviet Union post-independence, as did many of the Non-Aligned Group of 77. But India was, is (sort of) a democracy and until the last 15 years or so, was mostly secular. Now both are virulently religious and we know that Pakistan, at the very least, has tolerated the Taliban’s presence in Pakistan. With allies like these . . .
Yes. If we withdraw from Afghanistan now, it will likely again become a haven for al Qaeda and off-shoots of ISIL and the Taliban will be running the country inside of 6 months. But unless Pakistan destroys the Taliban inside Pakistan, nothing is going to change. What is best for the U.S. - an unending military commitment costing us billions of dollars a year just to maintain a broken country (there has never been any improvement) or ending the commitment and saving money and lives in an area of little to no strategic value?