Are the Americans really so stupid?

Earlier this month US President Donald Trump canceled a secret meeting with the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at Camp David. This was after the Taliban boasted about killing a US soldier  by a car bomb "at a checkpoint near NATO headquarters and the US embassy in Kabul". This came apparently when a deal "in principle" had been reached between the US and the Taliban which would have seen the US withdrawing troops "from five bases across Afghanistan within 135 days so long as the Taliban meet conditions set in the agreement". Another US service member was killed yesterday. A Taliban delegation visited Russia after the talks were called off where they expressed their desire for a resumption of dialogue. "It was astonishing for us because we had already concluded the peace agreement with the American negotiating team," said Taliban spokesman Shaheen. It would have been more than surprise, more bitter disappointment because the US had accepted almost all the Taliban conditions. The elected government in Kabul was excluded from the talks because the Taliban regards it as a puppet of the US and the Taliban gave "no assurances of mending its ways, sharing power, or even ceasing to harbor terrorists", wrote Ashok Malik. "On their part, the military, and the department of defence have been doing their utmost to oppose delay and sabotage their president." Why? Because, "The military is clear that once it goes it can never come back. It will have to destroy or write-off billions of dollars worth of equipment in Afghanistan, carefully put in place over 18 years." "The US negotiator was Pashtun-origin diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad," wrote S Deb. Pashtuns are natives of Afghanistan so Khalilzad should be keen to bring peace to Afghanistan but while he traveled the world he spoke only twice to India which "has spent over $3 billion on projects in Afghanistan, including building its parliament, a dam, highways and transmission lines". India, naturally, is greatly relieved that the talks have been called off, wrote Indrani Bagchi. A Taliban government in Kabul would have stopped trade with India and would have also blocked trade with Central Asian countries through Chabahar port in Iran, and then on through Afghanistan. It would have given a great boost to Pakistan as controller of the Taliban and allowed it to send more terrorists into India. What is really astonishing is that the US, despite having some of the best universities in the world, refuses to learn from its own history. Ronald Reagan supplied arms and trained the Mujahideen in "bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare". Just as Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David, so Reagan invited the Mujahideen to the White House. Mujahideen, Taliban, al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks have one common connection and that is Pakistan. No point in ceremonies at Ground Zero it they continue to reward the perpetrators. How stupid?