The US President Donald Trump believed that the US military was defeated in Afghanistan and elsewhere and demanded that troops be withdrawn from there, says former adviser to US leader John Bolton.
On Tuesday, a book of memoirs was published by the former adviser to the President of the United States on national security, Bolton, in which he describes his work in the White House in 2018-19.
In his memoirs, the ex-adviser describes one of the meetings in which Trump and members of his administration participated, including James Mattis, who served as secretary of defense until January 1, 2019.
The President asked the Minister how he understood the victory in Afghanistan. He replied that this was the absence of attacks on the US military, and proposed the wording “end the war” rather than “withdraw troops”.
“I gave you what you asked. Unlimited powers, no prohibitions. You lose. You get their butt kicked. You failed”, – Trump replied to this, as Bolton writes.
When Mattis asked if it would be possible to postpone the withdrawal of troops in order to save the lives of the military and diplomats, Trump said:
“We cannot afford this. We failed. If everything went differently, I would not have done that”.
At the same time, the President noted that we are also talking about Syria, Iraq and Yemen, where the US military has been present for several years in accordance with the declared task of combating terrorism.
Even before being elected president, Trump advocated the withdrawal of US troops from the “hot spots” in order to put an end to the “endless wars” abroad, which include the longest armed conflict in Afghanistan. In his book, Bolton describes how the head of state constantly demanded the development of plans for the withdrawal of troops, but members of his administration discouraged him, arguing that this would harm US national security interests.
At the end of February 2020, at a ceremony in Qatar, the United States and the Afghan Taliban radical group signed the first peace agreement in more than 18 years of war, which provides for the withdrawal of foreign troops (US and their allies) from Afghanistan in 14 months and the beginning of the inter-Afghan dialogue in March after the prisoner exchange deal.