You know, I’m not one to cut and run. But, considering everything, here, there and everywhere, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t reduce military operations to zero, along with the funding the Afghan government is receiving. I don’t care if he’s just playing to the cameras and “really doesn’t mean it”. Enough is too much. You want our help, it comes with strings. String One is that you don’t bad-mouth us. String Two is that we kill the Bad Guys whenever and wherever. You might want to tell your people that if the Taliban moves in, they need to be elsewhere for a while, because it’s going to get very noisy.
Let’s see how well he does with the Taliban without our support. Oh, and by the way, there will be no refuge for you here is you have to flee for your life.
I saw it said, elsewhere on the Intertubz, by one of our soldiers that “We can beat the Taliban, but we can’t beat the Afghan government.” Sounds true enough.
So my vote is that we leave. Develop long-range drones that can be sent do do what’s necessary if the Taliban starts to get out of hand again and be a threat. Bring our people home and stop shedding our blood and spending our treasure on this. But we leave with a warning–“Don’t make us come back. You won’t like it.”