Is the Forever War in Afghanistan Coming to an End?
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
American troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly twenty years. Every President since George W. Bush has promised an imminent end to the fighting and a U.S. withdrawal, but none has succeeded. The Trump Administration brokered a deal with the Taliban which planned to end the American military presence in the country this May, and peace talks are under way in Doha, Qatar. But, in recent months, hundreds of Afghans have been killed in a series of assassinations apparently orchestrated by the Taliban—and some, perhaps, by the government in Kabul. Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the difficulties faced by the Biden Administration.
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| 1:11.0 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about |
| 1:16.1 | politics. It's Thursday, March 4th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 1:23.3 | On May 1st, 2003, President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln |
| 1:30.3 | and announced that the United States and its allies had prevailed in Iraq. |
| 1:35.3 | In the middle of the speech, though, he made a quick reference to another war that the U.S. was waging, |
| 1:41.3 | this one in Afghanistan. |
| 1:43.3 | We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, |
| 1:47.2 | restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. |
| 1:55.7 | As I speak, a special operations task force led by the Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists, |
| 2:03.6 | and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. |
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