Kabul seeks clarification after Trump's comment on Afghan war

[left-of-center2012]

Request follows US president saying he could end Afghan war in '10 days', didn't 'want to kill 10 million people'.

Afghanistan has said the United States should clarify comments by President Donald Trump, in which he said he could easily win the Afghan war by wiping out the country but did not "want to kill 10 million people". Trump made the remarks on Monday at the White House ... "I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone," Trump told reporters. "It would be over in - literally, in 10 days. And I don't want to do, I don't want to go that route."

The comment drew a stiff response from Afghanistan's presidential palace, which has been excluded from talks between the US and the Taliban. "The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate," it said in a statement on Tuesday. "While the Afghan government supports the US efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan, the government underscores that foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan's fate in absence of the Afghan leadership," it added, calling for clarification of Trump's statement.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy for Afghanistan who travels to Kabul on Tuesday to continue meetings, said on Twitter that Trump had reiterated the need for a negotiated peace.
achieved through a political settlement," Khalilzad said. "There is no reasonable military solution to the war in Afghanistan, and that peace must be More than 20,000 foreign troops, most of them American, are in Afghanistan as part of a US-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces. Some US forces carry out "counterterrorism" operations.

A record 3,804 Afghan civilians were killed last year due in part to stepped-up air attacks by US-led forces ...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/kabul-seeks-clarification-trump-comment-afghan-war-190723100952964.html

[Bayard]

1. Idiot diplomacy in action again

World leaders do not go around saying how they can wipe another country off the face of the earth. That's a world bully.

[gratuitous]

2. Aw geez, get over yourself, Afghanistan

Trump was just trying out his pitch for a Nobel Prize: "See? I didn't kill 10 million people, but I could have. Where's my damn Peace Prize?" It's not like Trump had an actual plan (he says he does, but *probably* doesn't).

Man, the media are going to have to "both sides" the shit out of this if Trump isn't going to sound like a madman whose little red caboose just went chuggin' 'round the bend.