Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice applauded the Trump administration’s decision Saturday to cancel a meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David.
“Let me make a point first about the decision to cancel the meeting: That was a good decision,” Rice said in a Monday night interview with Stephen Colbert.
“I think the Taliban has become convinced that we want a deal far more than they do. The last years, not just the Trump administration but going back to the Obama administration, we’ve been talking about the importance of leaving [Afghanistan],” she continued
“We need to bring the troops home. We all want this war to end, but I think the Taliban had become convinced that they could get just about any deal, and it’s good that the meeting was canceled,” she also said.
{mosads}Rice also said she would not have picked the time or place for the meeting that Trump administration officials originally planned.
“Now, yes, I would probably not have chosen to do the meeting at Camp David three days before 9/11,” Rice said.
“Let’s just say I might have found another venue,” she added.
Rice also called on negotiators to “get the backing from the president and from the White House” in order for deliberations with the Taliban to be productive for the U.S. and for allies in the Afghan government.
“Secretary Pompeo, the secretary of State, has said that we have to go back to principle first,” Rice said. “We’re not going to negotiate an end to the Afghan war that is going to leave the Taliban with the ability to just bring terrorists back in in the way that they did before 9/11.”
Rice called seeing Afghan women in law enforcement and the armed forces and girls attending school “the most remarkable thing” she witnessed during her time as secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, and she said U.S. forces “cannot abandon these women.”
“We will get it settled. We can make a deal, but let’s make a good deal, not a bad one,” Rice said.
Rice noted as well that she does not believe Russia should be let back into the Group of Seven (G-7) major economies after President Trump called for the country to be reinstated into the organization last month, saying she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he’s reuniting the Russian people in greatness.”
“I don’t think they ever should have been in the G-7. It was supposed to be the world’s largest economies, and when’s the last time you bought anything made in Moscow that wasn’t made of petroleum?” she asked.