The Taliban had control over much of Afghanistan in 2017, when Trump announced a troop buildup and plan to “kill terrorists” and not nation-build. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
With the situation not fundamentally changing, Trump, understandably, wanted to engage in peace talks with the Taliban, which is effectively a state actor in a region that’s somewhere between civil war and divided, patchwork sovereignty.
The neocons and conservative movement —for whom Bolton was a champion—simply couldn’t abide Trump’s realism, as it would amount to admitting defeat in Washington’s Afghan boondoggle, which has stretched across two-decades.
