LT. General H.R. McMaster, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that Trump forced the release of 5000 Taliban fighters from prison, which precipitated his deal for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
This is information the public will never hear on Fox News or any other right-wing media outlet. You may have forgotten that Trump negotiated the withdrawal without including the Afghanistan government, which was another foreign policy disaster for Trump.
COOPER: And does Trump bear part of the responsibility for what happened?
MCMASTER: Oh, yes.I mean, so the whole premise of talking to the Taliban before you leave Afghanistan, why the heck were we even doing that?
COOPER: He was going to invite them to Camp David.
MCMASTER: Right. Even the Obama administration, when they made the mistake of pulling all of our troops out of Iraq in 2010, which really set conditions for the rise of ISIS and so forth by 2014, the Obama administration didn't negotiate with al-Qaeda in Iraq on the way out.
And so if we were going to leave, why not just leave? What happened in these series of negotiations and concessions to the Taliban is we kind of threw the Afghans under the bus on the way out.
COOPER: And they cut the Afghan government out of those negotiations, right?
MCMASTER: Absolutely. So that was mistake one. Then forced them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth. And then began to withdraw.
COOPER: The Trump administration forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban.
MCMASTER: Correct.
And then also stopped the active targeting of the Taliban, which President Trump, again, to his credit in 2017, had restored because he was convinced, like, how the heck does this make any sense to give your enemy a timeline for your withdrawal and then say, now I'm going to negotiate a favorable settlement?
Trump wanted to use the Taliban for a photo-op at Camp David.
Weird and weirder.
