President Donald Trump has known for months that Russia has been paying a bounty to Taliban militants to murder American soldiers and did nothing about it as he continued to pursue a deal with them to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Of all the things Trump has let Vladimir Putin get away with since taking office, paying a bounty for every American soldier killed by a Taliban militant is by far the worst.
According to the New York Times:
American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there.
Trump has also known about this since at least March and has refused to do anything about it, thus allowing Putin and Russia to continue paying a bounty for the taking of American lives.
The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said. Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news and covert and deniable military operations.
If Trump actually cared about the troops and is not Putin’s puppet, he would be demanding that Russia stop targeting American soldiers in this way and would immediately scrap talks with Taliban leaders. Instead, Trump is ignoring what Russia is doing and is letting American blood be spilled for money.
It’s a complete betrayal of our military and the United States. And it should be yet another charge Trump is arrested and prosecuted for.
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