President Donald Trump rejected former National Security Adviser John Bolton's opposition to the Taliban peace agreement.
"Nobody should be criticizing this deal after 19 years," Trump told reporters Saturday, shaking his head when asked about Bolton's opposition. "He had his chance. He didn't do it.
"He was very much in favor of going in. We should have never gone in in the first place when they went into Iraq, when they went into the Middle East in such a fashion."
Bolton tweeted Saturday:
"Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America's civilian population. This is an Obama-style deal. Legitimizing Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America's enemies generally."
Trump responded to Bolton's tweet, pointing to Bolton's own lack of a solution.
"I noticed he was negative, but he should have tried to do something better," Trump said. "He was here for a year. He could have done something better. I was all ears, and he wasn't able to do that."
Trump was speaking about the criticism of his administration's coronavirus response, and was also presented with Bolton's criticism of his Taliban peace deal and Afghanistan troop withdrawal.
"I was very much against it when they'd gone in," Trump said, saying it was Bolton's mistake he was correcting. "He thought we should have. That's been proven wrong.
"I'm surprised anybody would be against something where we try and end a 19-year war," Trump continued. "We're 8,000 miles away from our home. We've done a great job in the sense that we've killed a lot of terrorists. We've put them out of commission, who knows what they would have done if we didn't do that, but it's time for us to come home."
Trump said it is time for those in the region to patrol the situation.
"They can all work on this," Trump said. "We've been doing it for nations that have been surrounding Afghanistan. Now it's time for us to start coming home."
Trump suggested the world has used the U.S. military support without giving it due respect.
"What we have done for the world is incredible, and usually we don't even get a thank you," Trump said.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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