The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
For 9/11 families, mixed views on TrumpTaliban talks
NEW YORK — If President Donald Trump’s nowcanceled plan for secret talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents on U.S. soil was stunning, the date chosen was perhaps even more so: days before the anniversary of 9/11, the reason for the war they were going to talk about ending.
Sept. 11 victims’ relatives and first responders digested the news Monday with mixed feelings. Several called the timing unfortunate but the idea of talks worthwhile, a potential path toward peace for Afghans and Americans weary of Washington’s longest war.
“I don’t want to see other families suffer the way I did. That’s the bottom line. Not soldiers or innocent victims of terrorism,” said Jim Riches, a retired New York deputy fire chief who responded to the terror 2001 attacks and lost his son, Jimmy, a fellow firefighter.
Rosaleen Tallon was angry — though not at the U.S.Taliban negotiations. She sees the Afghan Islamic militants as “small fish” compared with the nation she feels hasn’t been held sufficiently accountable for 9/11: Saudi Arabia.
“We’re not really getting at 9/11. That makes my blood boil,” said Tallon, who lost her brother, probationary firefighter Sean Tallon.
Tallon wants U.S. troops home, and she really wants the U.S. government to do more to probe allegations, which she and others have raised in a lawsuit, that Saudi government employees knowingly assisting the hijacking plot. Riyadh denies it.
Trump tweeted Saturday that he canceled an until thenclandestine weekend meeting at Camp David with Taliban representatives and Afghanistan leaders. He said he changed his mind after a Taliban car bombing in Kabul on Thursday killed 12 people, including a U.S. service member.
On Monday, the president declared that U.S. peace talks with the Taliban are “dead.”
Word of the planned Camp David meeting was a surprise to Ellen Judd, who chairs the Afghanistan committee of the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which involves over 200 relatives.
“I think it would be great if the troops were withdrawn. While we certainly want that, there is so much more involved in the peace process,” said Judd, who lost her partner, Christine Egan, in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Judd hopes the Afghan government — which has been largely sidelined from the negotiations — and civilians will have a role in a broader peace process that would produce a durable ceasefire.
The U.S. went to war against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban a month after 9/11 for harboring alQaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.