US President Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his pledge to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
“We are working to finally end America’s longest war and bring our troops back home,” Trump said in his annual State of the Union speech to Congress.
He said that in Afghanistan, “the determination and valor of our warfighters has allowed us to make tremendous progress, and peace talks are no underway.”
“I am not looking to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, many of them totally innocent,” Trump said.
“It is also not our function to serve other nations as law enforcement agencies,” Trump continued. These are warfighters that we have — the best in the world — and they either want to fight to win or not fight at all.
Trump called off the talks with the Taliban to end the 18-year-long war in September after an attack killed a US soldier in Kabul. The talks resumed but were interrupted again in December after a suicide attack on a U.S. base outside Kabul killed two civilians.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that they were demanding “demonstrable evidence” from the Taliban that it can and will reduce violence before signing a peace agreement.
