President Donald Trump was rightly critical of the deal struck with Cuba during the Obama administration when he said the communist Cuban government got everything it wanted, and the U.S. got nothing in exchange. He has thankfully been reversing some of those unilateral concessions.
Let’s apply his standard to the recently announced “peace deal” with the Taliban. Under terms of the agreement, as reported in the Washington Times, “The U.S. will free 5,000 Taliban prisoners and begin to remove sanctions on top Taliban leaders.”
What does the U.S. get in return? The agreement, reportedly, asserts that we start calling them the Islamic Emirate, even though the U.S. doesn’t recognize it as a state. It has agreed to release “1,000 people from ‘the other side’ held by the militant group, all before March 10.”
Also in exchange for removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a goal long sought by the president, the Taliban has agreed to permanently cut all ties with terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, and to never allow Afghanistan to again become the center for extremist organizations. How do they do that when they have been involved in terrorism – some of it supported by the Iranian regime – that has caused the deaths of many American troops?
Beginning March 10 in Norway, the Taliban also pledges to engage in formal talks with the Afghan government, which it has never recognized as legitimate. I’m betting the Nobel committee will hand out a “peace prize” to Taliban leaders in the final corruption of that once prestigious award (they also gave one to PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat).