Pompeo: Trump Seeks to End War in Afghanistan with Taliban Peace Talks

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on the way to Doha, Qatar, that the United States is committed to ending the war in Afghanistan once and for all and eventually reducing American forces on the ground there to zero.

Pompeo is, as President Donald Trump announced at a White House press briefing on Thursday, attending talks between the Afghan government and Taliban leadership in Doha to begin the peace process and eventually end America’s longest war.

Pompeo said that American “men and women who have been there now since 9/11—almost 20 years now” are ready to come home.

When asked by Breitbart News about this trip occurring on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Pompeo said he believes the American people’s “righteous indignation” in response to the deadly attack that left the Twin Towers in New York City destroyed and thousands of Americans dead was “wholly justified.” But he said that “now is the moment for Afghanistan” to be sent on “the next step in its trajectory” by negotiating peace and ending the war.

“I don’t think there’s any American who doesn’t remember that day anywhere who’s over 25 or 24-years-old – anyone old enough to be watching the TV screen that day or living in New York City that day,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo said the Taliban have made a “series of commitments” and that the United States has “every expectation that they will follow through on them.” If the Taliban follows through on its word, he said, the United States is committed to removing all American forces from Afghanistan once and for all.

“Our commitment to reduce our forces to zero is conditioned on them executing their obligations under the agreement,” Pompeo said.

That’s where our focus—the president said, and I think General McKenzie said yesterday, that by late fall we’ll be down to roughly 4,500 U.S.

We want everyone to have the chance to reduce the risk and reduce the forces as well, so our movement to the appropriate levels is consistent with the two goals the president laid out when I became Secretary of State.

Some of the “conditions” that Pompeo said the United States is considering in its decisions on the timeline of troop withdrawals relate to the Taliban and Afghan government’s ability to ensure that risks to the American homeland do not arise again from Afghanistan.

Those are the conditions that we’re looking at as we advise the president on how quickly we can get to our objective to have no American forces in Afghanistan.”.

We’ve inflicted real costs on the Taliban when they’ve put American lives at risk, and that’s something we will continue to do.”

Pompeo also said that even when the United States does end up fully withdrawing from Afghanistan—a yet-to-be-determined date dependent upon those aforementioned conditions—the United States is prepared to send forces back in, if needed, if the Taliban and Afghan government fail to contain terrorist threats to the United States homeland

“The president has said that,” Pompeo said

“The president has said whether it’s a year from now or three years from now, if there’s a risk to the United States of America, we’ll go in—I think he used more colorful language than this—but I think he said we’ll go in there and we’ll take care of business