GUEST: Rahul Mahajan is the author of two books on the Iraq war: Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond and The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism. He also teaches at University of Wisconsin, River Falls, and the US Foreign Policy and Empire Correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.

BACKGROUND: Donald Trump's desire for a foreign policy triumph to end the longest-running war in US history came to a grinding halt on Saturday when the President tweeted that he had secretly invited the Afghan Taliban and President Ashraf Ghani to Camp David and then canceled the talks.

For years, talks between US and Taliban representatives came tantalizingly close to a deal. But in the lead up to this past weekend, Taliban-linked bombings in Afghanistan spiked. Trump explained his decision to cancel the Camp David meeting after the Taliban took credit for a suicide bombing that claimed the lives of a US soldier and 11 others.

While some observers of the war expressed relief over what they saw as a very flawed deal now ending, others here in the US were aghast at the timing of a Camp David meeting so close to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

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