Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump Should Reject His Envoy’s Deal With the Taliban

The agreement would elevate and legitimize the terrorist group.

September 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Twilight of a war?
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The best that can be said of the peace deal nearly completed between the U.S. and the Taliban is that it allows President Donald Trump to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan before the 2020 election. That’s not nearly enough to merit approval — not just because the agreement proves the promise to be empty, but also because it is a foolish promise in the first place.

As U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad this week told the Afghan Tolo News, the proposed agreement would require the U.S. to withdraw forces from five bases in Afghanistan over the next 135 days. One senior U.S. official predicted to me last week that the headline for the deal would be, “America Agrees to Leave Afghanistan.”