With Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan currently visiting the U.S., both he and President Trump have already gotten off to a shaky start. According to Pakistani news outlets, PM Khan arrived to the U.S. without a State Department official welcome, and was greeted at the airport not by the standard limousine treatment given to world leaders, but an ordinary airport shuttle.
No US official were present to receive PM @ImranKhanPTI at IAD airport. Neither IK recieved any state protocol. pic.twitter.com/WP1rV8XfjG
— Fawad Rehman (@fawadrehman) July 20, 2019
At the Oval Office meeting in front of cameras, Trump continued to raise not only eyebrows but serious concerns when he began to speak on the war in Afghanistan while addressing a possible relationship with Islamabad in mediating talks with the Taliban.
Speaking in regards to the now 18-year long war in Afghanistan, Trump made horrifying remarks on how he did not want to “go that route” of killing 10 million Afghanis, although he “could win that war in a week”:
If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. But I don’t want to kill 10 million people. Afghanistan could be wiped off the face of the earth…it would be gone, it would be over in literally 10 days. I don’t want to go that route.”
Trump later added he hoped there would be peace from possible talks with the Taliban with mediation from Pakistan, and the White House later followed up with a statement attempting to remedy his remarks:
The path to a strong and enduring partnership between Pakistan and the US lies in working together to find a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan.”
Official White House statement
What Trump is supposedly alluding to is the “mother of all bombs” that he later referred to, which was the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used on the battlefield when U.S. troops bombed and killed 36 IS fighters in Afghanistan in the spring of 2017, just three months into his presidency. He later boasted about how loud that particular bomb was, and how large of a crater it made upon impact.
Trump’s remarks become even more horrifying with what could be a reference to using nuclear bombs or weapons on Afghanistan as well. While there is no official or military support for using nuclear weapons against Afghanistan, with the anniversary of Hiroshima coming up it becomes a horrifying reminder that the President of the United States can make casual remarks about obliterating an entire country without measurable backlash.
