Carter Malkasian
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the way, and Trump was uniquely determined to leave. The result
was the closest the United States has come to ending the war.
Khalilzad, once again serving as a special envoy, made quick prog-
ress by oering a timeline for the complete withdrawal o U.S. forces
in return for the Taliban engaging in negotiations with the Afghan
government, reducing violence as the two sides worked toward a com-
prehensive cease-¥re, and not aiding al Qaeda or other terrorist
groups. Over the course o nine rounds o talks, the two sides devel-
oped a draft agreement. The Taliban representatives in the talks and
the group’s senior leaders refused to meet all o¤ Khalilzad’s conditions.
But the initial agreement was a real opportunity for Trump to get the
United States out o Afghanistan and still have a chance at peace.
It fell apart. Although Trump toyed with the idea o holding a dra-
matic summit to announce a deal at Camp David in September 2019,
he was torn between his campaign promise to end “endless wars” and
the possibility o a resurgent terrorist threat, which could harm him
politically. During an interview with Fox News in August, he was dis-
tinctly noncommittal about fully withdrawing. “We’re going down to
8,600 [troops], and then we’ll make a determination from there,” he
said, adding that a “high intelligence presence” would stay in the coun-
try. So when the Taliban drastically escalated their attacks in the run-
up to a possible announcement, killing one American soldier and
wounding many more, Trump concluded that he was getting a bad deal
and called o the negotiations, blasting the Taliban as untrustworthy.
Trump, like Obama before him, would not risk a withdrawal that might
someday make him vulnerable to the charge o willingly unlocking the
terrorist threat. And so yet another chance to end the war slipped away.
The notion that the United States should have just left Afghani-
stan presumes that a U.S. president was free to pull the plug as he
pleased. In reality, getting out was nearly as di¾cult as prevailing. It
was one thing to boldly promise that the United States would leave
in the near future. It was quite another to peer over the edge when
the moment arrived, see the uncertainties, weigh the political fallout
o a terrorist attack, and still take the leap.EXPECT THE BAD, PREPARE FOR THE WORST
The United States failed in Afghanistan largely because o intracta-
ble grievances, Pakistan’s meddling, and an intense Afghan commit-
ment to resisting occupiers, and it stayed largely because o unrelenting