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Eli, you know the saying there is always a tweet for everything. let me put up this tweet from president i should say, excuse me, from president trump but at the time he was private citizen trump saying that while barack obama is slashing the military, he is also negotiating with our sworn enemy, the taliban who facilitated 9/11. he seems to have not even taken his own advice criticizing a former president but then turning around and doing exactly what he criticized the former president of doing. he s not the most consistent, and that s why he s always a tweet because he s always living in the context in that moment. and right now he s the president of the united states and he wants to draw down the troops. even though it s very kplaktd as we have been talking about. and i think when you play that clip and you hear him saying how easy it will be to do these deals to make peace in the middle east to figure out afghanistan, he proposed to negotiate between india and pakistan, he s tr ....
Challenge. it has been a challenge in any negotiation with the taliban. they are patient. they are willing to wait us out. either our electoral cycle or for having troops in afghanistan. and i think the president has been talking about withdrawal. there is a debate as to what that means. the negotiated number had been to draw down u.s. troops to 8500. the challenge of course is the taliban wanted to attack and talk at the same time. they had not only the attack on thursday that the president was referring to. they have had target assassinations. they have had suicide attacks. they have attacked two very large important afghan cities in the last four to five weeks. so they know how to build leverage. and i think part of what s happening is the president s realizing that the taliban not only is trying to attack and is doing damage, but they are playing for the long game. he s not sure, and i think the administration around him is not ....
As much as he can sort of hang out there and suspended animation this promise this possibility that maybe something will happen that comes of talking, it doesn t seem like the administration is really all in the same page when it comes to afghanistan what to do here. obviously getting all of the sides together. it just didn t seem like it was ready to have this meeting yet. why the president decided to put out there that there was going to be a meeting at all when nobody really knew that is another question here. and, you know, as much as he thinks he s the secret ingredient in this diplomacy, this is a really hard situation for him because, yes, he wants to not be an interventionist person. the troops are basically policemen over there. he doesn t want american forces to be used that way. yet at the same time he is very weary about being blamed for a potential mistake, a foreign policy disaster. you obviously cover the white house. you know it better than anyone. give us the politic ....
Attic, the dramatic and the hyperpersonalized way of doing business and trying to go for the big deal. let me pick up on what juan was saying about the possibility of trying to achieve a breakthrough here. 18 years at war with the taliban, al kida, even to some extent in recent years, isis in afghanistan. is there any reason in the history of this conflict that would make you or any others in the national security establishment confident that the taliban, if in fact reached an agreement with the u.s., would abide by it. not many reasons to trust the taliban as juan noted. they have been al qaeda s protector. they have been the main force in afghanistan that have been working to eject u.s. and international forces and killing our troops all yearlong. so first of all of course the tragedy of the loss of the life of a servicemember is a reason to pause and assess the diplomatic strategy, but really that s been going on all year. i don t think that s the reason ....
Sure if they can trust what the taliban has atried to. and ultimately as jeremy indicated the goal is to get the afghan government and the taliban together. that s been the difficult next step. that is a really tough sled to hoe. and the u.s. government and the afghan government are taking another look at this deal and determining whether or not they actually want to sit down with the taliban at this moment. let me play devil s advocate and say there are those who are at odds with him. there are others who are looking at this that are saying we ve been in this war 18 years. we went to war against the taliban and against al qaeda. nothing has particularly gotten better. there are other countries in the region perhaps just as failed as afghanistan. you think of libya, you think of yemen where the u.s. doesn t have 18,000 troops there. why can t the president try to ....