Trump says he could win Afghan war in a week
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he could end the war in Afghanistan “in a week,” but that doing so would cause millions of deaths, The Hill reported.
Instead, the president said during a White House meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan that he wants Pakistan’s help to bring an end to the nearly 18-year-old conflict.
“I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump told reporters, alluding to what he said were military plans. “If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. ... It would be over in — literally, in 10 days.”
The president, who campaigned on ending lengthy overseas U.S. military engagements, called the war “ridiculous” and said it helped turned the nation into the world’s “policemen.”
“I don’t want to go that route,” Trump said of his supposed military plan. “So we’re working with Pakistan and others to extricate ourselves. Nor do we want to be policemen, because basically we're policemen right now. And we're not supposed to be policemen.”
The Afghan conflict was one of the top agenda items for Trump’s meeting with Khan. The administration has been engaged in peace talks with the Taliban aimed at ending the war, which was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The Oval Office huddle was aimed at cooling tensions with Pakistan in an effort to coax them into putting pressure on the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire with the Afghan government.
Khan agreed with Trump that the war must be brought to an end through peace talks.
“There is no military solution in Afghanistan,” he told reporters. “If you go all-out military, there will be millions and millions of people who will die."
Trump said that Pakistan could help play a role in stabilizing Afghanistan after a possible U.S. pullout and suggested he could restore hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan “depending on what we work out.”
“I think we have a better relationship with Pakistan right now than we did when we were paying that money. But all of that can come back, Trump said.
Trump cut off $1.3 billion in annual aid payments to Pakistan in January 2018 after the U.S. accused the South Asian country of not doing enough to combat terrorist groups.
That decision exacerbated long-standing tensions over the Pakistani government’s ties to extremist groups and its tepid support for the U.S.-led war.