President Donald Trump took to Twitter last week to thank Libertarians and, apparently, confirm Sen. Rand Paul’s statement that the president “is ending the war in Afghanistan.”
Earlier this month, the president tweeted he hoped to have remaining U.S. forces “home by Christmas.”
Ending America’s involvement in Afghanistan would be a good thing. The conflict has gone on for so long that a second generation of armed forces personnel are now serving there:
The US troops who were deployed to Afghanistan in the war on terrorism after 9/11 hoped their sacrifice would spare their children the need to also fight — but after 19 years, the mission has become generational.
Operation Enduring Freedom ended officially in 2014, but operations in the battle-scarred country have continued since and those same American service members have seen their offspring take up the cause.
“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’ ” Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, who has deployed three times with the 20th Special Forces Group since 2002, told Stars and Stripes.
And now, Spc. Payton Sluss has followed in his father’s footsteps — serving in Afghanistan, including at Forward Operating Base Fenty where deBoer had served.
“My feet were walking the same land you were,” Sluss told his dad in a joint phone interview with the military newspaper.
An agreement earlier this year between the Taliban, the U.S., and NATO member nations was supposed to remove foreign troops from the country by mid-2021 – if the Taliban cut its ties with international terrorist organizations.
It has not gone well. The U.S. and the Taliban recently agreed to a “re-set” after fighting escalated. Security officials and outside observers are skeptical the Taliban will fulfill its part of the February deal, which would allow U.S. forces to withdraw.