Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster lambasted President Donald Trump‘s negotiations with the Taliban in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes released on Thursday.
McMaster said during the interview that Trump was “partnering with the Taliban” ahead of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, going “against, in many ways, the Afghan government.”
He noted that the president’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan was “unwise,” and wrote in his upcoming book that Trump “cheapened” the lives of American soldiers who died in combat by making so many concessions to the Taliban.
The U.S. signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in February, assuring the Taliban it would withdraw all its troops within 14 months as long as the Taliban honored its side of the agreement. The hope was that the Afghan government would follow in the U.S.’ footsteps in creating a peace agreement.
McMaster argued that creating an agreement with the Taliban was not the best way to support Afghanistan.
“What we require in Afghanistan is a sustained commitment to help the Afghan government,” he said on 60 Minutes.
McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser who served from February 2017 to April 2018, has since become a vocal critic of many of the administration’s decisions and those within it.
In May 2019, McMaster said some White House officials were a “danger to the Constitution” and were trying “to manipulate the situation based on their own agenda, not the president’s agenda.”
