Has Trump surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban?

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - I know you can see the difference between the AUMF and the WWII declarations - the WWII declaration are targeting specific nation-states "War against the Government of Germany." When the government of Germany was no longer viable or in control, that was a metric of victory.

Now, the AUMF, the non-war is, "against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons."

So, the AUMF is a terrible declaration that authorizes no specific enemy, no specific anything. It's essentially a carte blanche for "umm, just go get whoever you think is bad." And that's the wrong answer. They might as well have authorized the military against the "war on drugs." The AUMF and each renewal is a Congressional and Presidential failure.

Even so, the Taliban, is essence, harbored the terrorists - so their government was fair game. They no longer have a government. The Taliban, as that kind of entity, does not exist. At this point, the AUMF could be used to strike Saudi Arabia out of the blue.

The enemy - "those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons" - That's pretty clear to me. It was defined as Al Qaeda and those who harbored them (the government of Afghanistan). Since Al Qaeda is not a organization which represents a nation or collection of nations, there really isn't any other way to state it.

Look, you talked about end state and I gave you pretty much the exact same example. War was declared on Germany, Italy, and Japan and yet other countries were part of the axis and we fought as well. The point is, the declarations aren't meant to be highly specific as if they're making a TASKORD. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization which strays away from the norm of a state directly committing a war like act, capable of appearing in multiple countries willing to harbor them (or unable to remove them). But much like the fact we had to fight WWII in locations beyond just Eastern Europe, it is imperative that our military has the flexibility to attack Al Qaeda where they decide to spring up in those countries which harbor them or are unable to remove them.

But again, you are straying away from the original point you made in that "The US should never have entered Afghanistan in the first place". If you have a problem with the language of the AUMF that's one thing, but to say we should not have taken on AQ in Afghanistan (which was not to be sanctioned by the Taliban), that is completely wrong. Also adding language to specifically state "remove the government of Afghanistan (or any country that willingly harbors AQ) and install a new peaceful self sustaining government" is pointless. What you're asking for is ridiculous.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - There were viable alternatives other than invading Afghanistan. There was one week between the time the US started bombing and when the Taliban made the offer that was rejected outright. I don't think that's time to allow the diplomacy process to work. We didn't even try it.

Would removing OBL stop Al Qaeda? Nope. But, invading Afghanistan hasn't stopped them either. Killing OBL didn't stop Al Qaeda. We cannot kill our way to victory in a war with an ideology.

What's ridiculous is a two decade war with no recognizable end-state for victory and an open-ended non-declaration of war.

Have you not observed how the Taliban has operated since? They've pretty much demonstrated they would not lived up to any deals we would have made. They were given the chance to turn over AQ and/or allow us to go after them specifically and they refused. The events of 9/11 pushed our country past the typical responses we've had for terrorist activity. This time they hit us significantly on our soil and we were not going to stand for the refusals followed by "hesitation" of the Afghan government. I'll place this here to emphasize my point:

Note the quote: "All week, reports from Kabul and Kandahar have indicated that the Taliban leaders were engaging in a cat-and-mouse game with the United States, with Mullah Omar saying Mr. bin Laden would never be handed over, then suggesting that he might be under certain conditions. The conditions changed from day to day. It appears clear that there are significant splits within the Taliban movement, although their exact nature is not easy to determine."
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/world/nation-challenged-taliban-afghans-coaxing-bin-laden-but-us-rejects-clerics-bid.html

Let's say for argument's we stopped the bombing and took the Taliban on with their offer. Do you really think their intent was to comply with all the US demands? They would have played games, the US would look even more incompetent (and weak), and the coalition would have weakened. Now you can criticize all you want about how much we invested in taking them out. Personally I thought what we were doing initially by using SOF to enable the Northern Alliance and direct precision air strikes was the appropriate level of force, which I would have hoped would result in building a big enough Afghan coalition to take control from there on their own. But I also know that in doing so, the potential of leaving a power vacuum was high enough to guarantee we would have to return.