COMMANDER AND CHEF
Don greets G.I.s on surprise Afghan trip
Peace talks are back on with the Taliban, President Trump announced during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to American troops serving in Afghanistan.
“The Taliban wants to make a deal, and we’re meeting with them,” Trump said during a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “They want to make to make a deal very badly.”
The commander-in-chief served up turkey dinner to service members after jetting into an airbase near the capital of Kabul in his first visit to those fighting in America’s longest war.
Trump, who has railed against American entanglements in foreign conflicts, said he wants to bring home about a third the 13,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan soon.
“We made tremendous progress and at the same time we’ve been drawing down our troops,” Trump said.
Still, Trump insisted ominously that the U.S. will stay in the country “until we have a deal or we have total victory.”
He also said the war in Afghanistan “will not be decided on the battlefield … Ultimately, there will need to be a political solution” which would be “decided by the people of the region.”
Just 21⁄2 months ago, Trump abandoned controversial plans to invite the Taliban for peace talks at Camp David on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Taliban controlled Afghanistan and gave refuge to Osama Bin Laden as the notorious al Qaeda leader plotted the worst terror attack on American soil.
Afghan officials were glad Trump called off U.S. talks with the Taliban partly because they were not included in them.
Seated next to Trump on Thursday, Afghan President Ghani praised his “very principled decisions regarding putting limits on the type of peace that will ensure the gains of the past year and ensure your security and our
security.”
Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and more than 2,400 American service members have been killed since the war began 18 years ago.
The war remains deadly, and just last week Trump oversaw the return home of the remains of two Army officers killed when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban holds sway over about half of the country, staging near-daily attacks targeting Afghan forces and government officials. The Afghan government blames the Taliban for a bomb attack Wednesday night that killed 15 people headed to a wedding in the northeastern part of the country.
Trump, who traveled without First Lady Melania Trump, has mostly avoided the holiday trips to visit the troops that his predecessors regularly took. He flew into Iraq last Christmas to visit American troops serving there.
The White House took pains to keep the trip a secret after Trump’s cover was blown last year when Air Force One was spotted en route to Iraq by an amateur British flight watcher.
Trump’s Thanksgivingthemed tweets were teed up to publish ahead of time to prevent suspicions arising about the president’s social media silence.
The president was secretly flown back to Washington from Florida, where reporters had been told he’d be spending Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago club. The plane he rode to Florida remained parked on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport to avoid revealing the president’s movement.
About 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, the president boarded a nearly identical plane concealed in a hangar at Andrews Air Base. It took off under cover of darkness, with cabin lights dimmed and window shutters drawn.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the visit had been in the works for weeks.
“It’s a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops,” Grisham told reporters before Trump landed. “We thought it’d be a nice surprise.”
Trump arrived at night in Afghanistan, as as smoke from trash fires wafted across the chilly Bagram Air Base near Kabul, the Afghan capital.
He served up turkey and fixings to hundreds of troops in a cafeteria and posed for photos with many of them. The president told the troops he was honored to spend his holiday with them.
“There is nowhere I’d rather celebrate this Thanksgiving than right here with the toughest, strongest, best and bravest warriors on the face of the Earth,” Trump said.