Trump's patience with the Taliban finally breaks

I'm not sure if the Taliban will care that much but Donald Trump had had enough on Saturday. He had secretly invited Taliban leaders and the Afghan president to come and see him at Camp David the following day to sign a peace deal. But the Taliban kept on killing and, most importantly, killing American soldiers. The latest one to die was on Thursday, blown up by a vehicle suicide bomb in eastern Kabul. When he was told of the death, the fourth in about two weeks, he must have begun to think then that his grand plan was not working. The Taliban clearly thought, Trump tweeted on Saturday, that the more killings the greater the leverage for a peace deal. But while that may be Taliban logic it ain't Trump logic. I should imagine there were a lot of expletives uttered in the White House. Why on earth, the president must have been asking, am I inviting these b.....ds into Camp David when they are still deliberately targeting my soldiers? Was this a serious miscalculation by the Taliban who had proudly acknowledged their responsibility for the killing of the soldier on Thursday, or was Trump progressively getting angry and decided at the last moment that he couldn't face shaking the hands of these turbaned warriors? Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, was already having second thoughts and I bet Zalmay Khalilzad, the main US negotiator in the Taliban talks in Qatar, wasn't that happy with the settlement he had squeezed out of the Taliban delegates. It was probably the best he could do, given that Trump had made it clear he wanted to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan and hoped to do so by the time of the 2020 presidential election. Now that Trump has cancelled the Camp David session it's difficult to know what will happen next. The Taliban will put all the blame on Trump and Trump has already put all the blame on the Taliban. It will not be easy for the White House to even consider restarting the negotiations and trying again for a settlement if the Taliban just go on killing US soldiers. And you can be sure the insurgents will not change their position. They believe the only way to get the Americans to withdraw under a settlement is to pile on the pressure. But I think the Taliban underestimated Trump. He is the type of president who makes decisions according to his gut and instincts. He had gone for this extraordinary secret Camp David meeting. The Taliban had pretty well everything they wanted in the draft settlement. So why on earth did they approve a suicide bomb attack in Kabul literally 72 hours before they were to fly to the US and get Trump's signature on a piece of paper? History will say: BIG MISTAKE.