The Pnyx: Peace negotiations
Michael McShane
Staff Writer
It’s confusing how I can be both for and against something that President Donald Trump has recently done.
His “secret” plan to have leadership from the Taliban, one of the U.S.’s most notorious enemies in the War on Terror, into Camp David for peace negotiations has been critiqued on both sides of the aisle.
Some of the criticism was understandable, having the peace talks with the Taliban of all groups so close to the 9/11 anniversary is both very bad timing and very Trump- esque thing to do.
Another critic of the planned meeting was that it was in Camp David. Liz Cheney chimed in on Twitter specifically about this and lambasted Trump that the Taliban should never set foot on Camp David.
At the end of her post she said Trump was right to end the talks. Now, the negotiations were canceled after the Taliban caused an attack that killed an American soldier and 11 others in the capital of Afghanistan.
As heart-breaking as the loss of an American soldier is and the Taliban is a horrible terrorist group, there needs to be peace talks one way or another.
The War on Terror has gone on for nearly 20 years now, we have service members in the armed forces who were born after 9/11, and from the looks of it the war does not look to be anywhere near over.
These peace talks, no matter how controversial, are a step in the right direction. The Taliban are monsters and may very well remain our enemy for years to come, but that is exactly what peace talks are for, to end an endless war that has taken the lives of too many men and women in our armed forces.
President Trump needs to find a way to bring peace negotiations back onto the table, at a more appropriate time and with the knowledge that he is not dealing with someone like Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un, but a longtime adversary that hates us just as much as we hate them.
It is almost as impossible of a task, but if peace talks can be achieved Trump should at least give it a thought. All he needs to do is not accidentally call someone “Rocket Man” and he might have a chance.