JohnRawls wrote:I assume that Bolton got fired for leaking information about Trump cancelling the Taliban meeting. I have no proof of this but this is logical. Leaving Afganistan would let Bolton focus on more pressing issues like Iran, Venezuela, NK etc so he had an inherent interest to push it through and be done with Afghanistan.
I don't agree with your so-called logical conclusion. I believe the following report from two CNN reporters has it about right:
Trump overruled advisers, VP on Taliban Camp David meetingSeptember 9, 2019
Even opposition from within his own national security team, including Vice President Mike Pence, could not deter Trump from pressing forward with his plan to host Taliban leaders at the rural presidential getaway.
Trump eventually scrapped the event after a Taliban car bomb killed a US soldier and 11 others last week. But that decision came after heated debate within the administration over the venue for the summit -- an outgrowth of larger, more substantial disagreements over the wisdom of negotiating with the Taliban at all.
The President told reporters Monday that discussions with the Taliban are "dead, as far as I'm concerned."
The talks have pitted Trump's hawkish national security adviser John Bolton against the nation's chief diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose agency has led negotiations with the Taliban over the past 10 months.
Bolton and his staff at the National Security Council have long been mistrustful of US Special Envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who they believe had too much authority in leading the negotiations and was giving the Taliban leaders too much leverage. The national security adviser, who had been sidelined on the Afghanistan discussions, has voiced his criticism directly to the President.
Khalilzad was also seen by some members of Trump's national security team as an extension of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- and hostilities between Bolton and Pompeo have surfaced in recent weeks.
Even amid the skepticism, Pompeo and Khalilzad remained focused on securing a peace deal, which would reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan from roughly 14,000 to 8,000, aligning with the President's own stated goal of withdrawal. Trump was briefed on the emerging deal during a meeting with his national security team at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course last month.
Along with other advisers who were fiercely critical of the terms of the emerging deal with the Taliban, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Bolton believed Trump remained amenable to changing his mind if additional information is presented in a certain way, a source familiar with the situation said.
The President, who'd grown irritated at the progress of peace talks, believed he was better positioned to strike a deal, according to a person familiar with his thinking. As he has in his diplomatic opening with North Korea. Trump preferred to do the face-to-face talks himself. The dramatic display of talks with sworn US enemies carried a similar made-for-television appeal.
As Trump mulled over the talks, he came up with the idea of hosting the leaders at Camp David, which was seen by multiple advisers, including Pence and Bolton, as a bad idea. Those opposed to the Camp David talks raised concerns with holding the meeting on the week of the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, according to the officials.
They advised the President on such, but Trump had become personally attached to the outcome and the logistics of the talks after meeting with top advisers about the Afghan peace process in August.
Trump was taken with the idea of sealing a landmark peace agreement in one of the most presidential settings, the people familiar with the talks said, who said there was little hope of changing his mind.
Only a small group of advisers were included in the planning for Camp David -- and after talks broke down and the historic meeting was scrapped, even fewer were told Trump was going to announce as much on Twitter.
Trump himself decided to cancel the talks on Thursday after the Taliban car bomb, but the plan wasn't revealed publicly until he announced it on Twitter. Some officials expressed confusion about why the plans needed to be revealed at all.
Now, the status of the Taliban talks remains unclear. Despite Trump saying in his tweet Saturday that peace negotiations are called off, new dates are currently being discussed by the White House for a future potential meeting with the US, the Taliban and the Afghan government, a source familiar with the matter said. It's unclear if the Taliban will have to make hard and fast commitments before the meeting.
"We're going to walk away from a deal if others try to use violence to achieve better ends in the negotiations," Pompeo said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "It's not right. It's not appropriate. It killed an American. And it made no sense for the Taliban to be rewarded for that kind of bad behavior."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics ... index.htmlI liked Bolton when he was a commentator on FOX News. Perhaps he would do better going back there if possible. He just was not in line with President Trump's ideas of making deals with bad actors.