Cobbled together

Give a bit of credit to the Trump administration for trying to broker an end to hostilities in Afghanistan via parallel agreements with the government in Kabul and the Taliban insurgencies. Blame the administration for failing to anticipate that it would be a nonstarter to make the freeing of 5,000 Taliban prisoners a precondition of talks between those two parties.

President Ashraf Ghani understandably rejected that notion, well aware that returning thousands of jihadis to the battlefield will strengthen a Taliban insurgency that remains committed to destabilizing the government and killing innocent Afghans, like Monday’s motorcycle bomb attack at a soccer game, which took three lives and wounded 11.

Those in Trump’s Republican Party who cheer the framework, six years after having lost their heads when President Obama released a mere five Taliban prisoners in exchange for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, beclown themselves.

Nor does the Taliban even have to recognize the legitimacy of a Kabul government for which America and our coalition partners sacrificed blood and treasure.

What’s more, the U.S. has laid out a timetable for withdrawing 12,000 American troops before the Afghan foes sit across a table in Oslo peace talks. That rewards intransigence.

No American should be blasé about the prospect of indefinitely keeping troops in a war zone. Provided the U.S. retains the capacity to root out terrorism when necessary, two decades with a heavy footprint is long enough.

But how we get from today to withdrawal matters mightily. So far, not so good.