Donald Trump was blasted by a leading conservative policy voice for his deal with the Taliban.
Former George W. Bush administration official Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the far-right American Enterprise Institute, explained "the folly of personal diplomacy," in an op-ed for The New York Times.
She cited numerous examples of recent presidents thinking their politics of personal diplomacy would overwhelm the facts on the ground.
"But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a dealmaker and displayed an 'I alone can fix it' arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record," she wrote.
Schake said Trump was suckered by the Taliban in the negotiations.
"The problem with Mr. Trump's Taliban deal wasn't that the administration turned to diplomacy. That was a sensible avenue out of the policy constraints. The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those," she explained.
She went on to argue that Trump's deal with the Taliban shows the importance of Congress reasserting authority.
"The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a president's program," Schake wrote. "Supporting Mr. Trump's Taliban agreement would have been — and should have been — a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully — both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it."
Read the full column.
