Taliban terrorists have invited Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to their political office in Qatar to discuss peace plans to bring the nearly 17-year-old war in Afghanistan to a conclusion.
The invitation, reportedly posted on the jihadist group’s social media accounts, came in response to Sen. Paul’s recent comments about the conflict, notes the Washington Times.
“We invite the respectable [U.S. Senator Rand Paul], in his official capacity to visit our political office in Doha for mutual talks,” the Taliban wrote on Twitter under the moniker of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
“We’ll prove to Mr. [Rand Paul], the immediate U.S. withdrawal from [Afghanistan] will bring peace to our country & will enhance international security,” added the Information Committee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in the social media post.
On February 8, Sen. Paul condemned America’s continued involvement in the Afghanistan war, which began in October 2001, noting that there is no end to the conflict in sight.
Paul told Fox News:
The war in Afghanistan is costing us $50 billion a year. … It’s time to come home. There is no military victory there. And I said the other day, you guys want to have a parade, let’s bring them home from Afghanistan, all 14,000 of them, declare victory. We got the enemy. We killed [Osama] Bin Laden.
Our problem is in our foreign policy is that we don’t know how to declare victory. We continue to fight and fight and fight to try to create a nation. And we’re just not very good at nation-building. It’s time to come home and do some nation-building in our country.
The senator is one of several lawmakers, including Republicans, who have expressed opposition to the ongoing war as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration intensifies American military operations against terrorists in the country, including the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), among others.
Peace negotiations with the Taliban are a major component of Trump’s strategy unveiled in August 2017.
Nevertheless, President Trump rescinded his support for reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government after the terrorist group carried out a series of attacks that killed scores of people in the war-ravaged country.
“I don’t think we’re prepared to talk right now. It’s a whole different fight over there. They’re killing people left and right. Innocent people are being killed left and right,” President Trump recently told reporters.
The Taliban has long been citing a complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan as preconditions for peace negotiations.
However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last year, “We stand ready to support peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban without preconditions.”
A top Pentagon official recently told lawmakers that the United States is currently spending an estimated $45 billion annually on the war, about half of what the American government spent during the peak of the conflict in 2011.
Since the conflict started more than 16 years ago, the U.S. has spent an estimated $877 billion, according to an analysis by Brown University.
There have been more than 2,260 U.S. military deaths and about 20,290 injuries throughout the war.
An estimated 14,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan, including about 3,900 deployed under President Trump.
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