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US to pull out troops from Iraq, Afghanistan ahead of poll as Trump pledged to get nation out of 'endless wars'

The move comes at a time when President Donald Trump has been accused of insulting American soldiers martyred in France during a visit there in 2018

In May, the New York Times came up with a report saying President Donald Trump wanted to pull out American troops out of Afghanistan by the time of the presidential election in November. And now, it seems the president is still firm on his stand. On Wednesday, September 9, a top American commander for the Middle East said Washington is all set to pull thousands of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by November to back the president’s promise of getting the US out of “endless wars”.

According to a report in Associated Press, US Central Command (Centcom) leader Marine Gen Frank McKenzie said the troops in Iraq will be cut down from 5,200 to about 3,000 showing the Trump administration’s confidence in the capacity of US-trained Iraqi security forces to handle the militant threat from the Islamic State. He also added later that the troops in Afghanistan would also drop to 4,500 by November. McKenzie said this in a telephone call with a small group of reporters, as per officials at his Centcom office. “We’re on a glide slope to be at 4,500 by the November time frame — October, late October, November time frame,” he said, according to the transcript of his statement. He also said the way to cutting down the troops' level to 4,500 would be decided in part by the military’s ability to pull out equipment from the violence-ravaged nation where the US has remained stuck since late 2001.

The US invaded Afghanistan in retaliation of the 9/11 attacks masterminded by al-Qaeda and toppled the Taliban government there. But the ensuing conflict and chaos dragged on for far too long to leave the US bleeding — in terms of manpower and money.

“At 4,500 we’re still going to be able to accomplish the core tasks that we want to accomplish. And we’ve shown more than ample goodwill and our willingness to demonstrate that we don’t want to be an occupying force in this country. But we do have strategic interests, vital interests, that compel us to be certain that these entities, such as al-Qaida and ISIS, can’t be guests there to attack the United States,” MacKenzie, 63, said.

In August 2017, months after he took over as the president, Trump said while his original instinct was to pull out troops from Afghanistan, he changed his mind to bolster the US military presence in the Asian country. Successive American administrations have struggled to execute a military pull-out from Afghanistan successfully as the US has found itself more buried in the chaotic affairs there. However, the Trump administration has made some moves towards reducing American troops in foreign lands of late. Last October, it pulled out some troops from northern Syria but faced a massive backlash both at home and abroad. Trump was accused of betraying the Kurds, America’s regional allies who then faced attacks from Turkey. The president was also slammed for allegedly weakening the US’s stand in foreign affairs.

In June, the US made a move towards reducing its presence in Afghanistan to 8,600 and was set to cut the numbers even more though McKenzie did not cite a projected number previously. The commander, as per the AP report, said a specific date has been targeted but stopped short of revealing it.

Obama also planned for troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama also came up with a timetable for withdrawing most US forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. The first phase of his plan sought 9,800 troops to remain in the country after the combat mission concluded in 2014 end in order to train the local forces and conduct missions against “the remnants of al-Qaeda”. The plan though came under questioning from some analysts who pointed to the insurgency’s resilience and the rigidity of the then US administration’s plan.

In the times of President Trump, the US was seen entering peace talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, building on the momentum that started in late 2018. The talks centered on the US withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in lieu of the Taliban pledging to block terror groups from operating on the soil of Afghanistan. The peace initiative also saw Trump planning to pull out 7,000 troops from the country. But in September 2019, Trump called off the talks abruptly a week after the US negotiator in the process, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced that an agreement had been reached “in principle” with the Taliban. In a series of tweets, Trump said he scrapped a secret meeting with the Taliban and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani at Camp David following the killing of an American soldier in a Taliban attack.

The latest move over withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan comes at a time when the president is facing strong criticism for allegedly insulting America’s fallen war heroes in France as “losers” and “suckers” during a 2018 visit to that country to commemorate the centenary of World War I (1914-18). The Atlantic came up with the revelation last week saying Trump did not go to the cemetery where the American soldiers who fell in the Battle of Belleau Wood are buried because his hair would get ruined in the rain. The president and his allies have strongly denied the allegation and dismissed it as “fake news”.

Trump’s relation with the military has also come under stress in recent times. A few months ago, the president’s plan to deploy military forces on the streets of Washington DC to quell protests met resistance from the military leadership. Again earlier this week, he attacked the military leadership publicly saying it waged wars to bolster profits of the defense-manufacturing firms. When Trump’s presidential opponent Joe Biden was asked on Wednesday whether he agreed with Trump’s moves to reduce the troops, the latter responded in the affirmative but “as long as there’s a plan to figure out how he’s (Trump) going to deal with ISIS”. Trump’s allies recently slammed Biden in the wake of the Atlantic report over his support for the Iraq War that started in 2003.