2 U.S. Serviceman Killed in Afghanistan

Curt Mills

Afghanistan, South Asia

With a president that wants out and core U.S. objectives achieved, critics of the war are asking: why is America still in the graveyard of empires?

WASHINGTON — National security officials wouldn’t elaborate Friday on the deaths of two U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan. The casualties, whose names were not released at press time, add to a total of four Americans killed in the country on the year. “Every death of an American service member is painful and tragic,” Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis (Ret.) of Defense Priorities told me. “When the loss of life is in the conduct of a mission that doesn’t serve U.S. interests and should have ended long ago, it is excruciating.”

The deaths come as Washington’s man at the negotiating table with the Taliban, Zalmay Khalilzad, inches closer daily to a prospective deal with the Islamist outfit responsible for protracting America’s longest war. Jason Dempsey, of the Center for New American Security (CNAS) and a veteran of the Afghanistan war, told a Washington crowd Thursday night that the very presence of Donald Trump’s envoy shows that this administration means business in wrapping up the conflict and transferring responsibility to the Afghans. Says Davis: “Before we suffer one more unnecessary casualty—and for the preservation of American security interests—we must withdraw immediately.”

Ambassador Khalilzad faces hurdles on two fronts—pernicious conspiracy theories in Afghanistan and a turbulent political climate back home, should he ever bring back a deal to hoc.

Tribulations ahead are assured: the official government is at the brink, and feels cut out. Circumstances are already at a nadir for the official authorities—2018 was the most violent year on record for the country’s civilians, and elections were recently postponed until at least the fall. The government’s future is far from assured in an Afghanistan stripped of a U.S. presence, as President Trump openly favors. Interestingly, the American-based son of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is a confirmed Trump supporter. Senior members of Ghani’s government say Khalilzad is a tendentious negotiator. “The reason he is delegitimizing the Afghan government and weakening it, and at the same time elevating the Taliban, can only have one approach,” Hamdullah Mohib, the government’s national security adviser, said last week in Washington. “It’s definitely not for peace.”