Peace through strength…

On January 29, 2018, President Trump announced that his administration won’t engage in talks with the Taliban after the terrorist group claimed responsibility for a pair of recent attacks that killed more than 100 people.

“When we see what they’re doing and the atrocities that they’re committing, and killing their own people, and those people are women and children — many, many women and children that are totally innocent — it is horrible,” Trump said during a meeting with members of the United Nations Security Council.

“So there’s no talking to the Taliban. We don’t want to talk to the Taliban. We’re going to finish what we have to finish,” Trump added.

Watch:

Fox News is now reporting that the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan have killed dozens of Taliban leaders last week using rocket artillery after tracking them to a meeting in volatile Helmand Province, according to the top American general in Afghanistan Wednesday.

U.S. Forces Afghanistan said more than 50 Taliban commanders, including the deputy Taliban shadow governor of Helmand was killed. Taliban leaders from six other provinces across Afghanistan were killed as well in the strike in the Musa Qala district of Helmand, according to the statement.

Twenty other Taliban leaders were killed in air strikes earlier this month by drones and Air Force A-10 Warthog jets based in neighboring Kandahar, which arrived earlier this year along with thousands of additional American troops.

“Helmand has been the financial engine of the insurgency. The Taliban draws 60 percent of their revenue from narcotics (and) criminal activity,” Nicholson said.

But Nicholson played down the impact the strikes would have nationwide.

“I would not call it strategic significance, but it definitively has a significant local significance in terms of the fight in southern Afghanistan,” he said.

Nicholson’s two-year tour is winding down later this year.

President Donald Trump has nominated Army Lt. Gen. Scott Miller, the current head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees the nation’s elite commando units, such as Delta Force, 75th Ranger Regiment and SEAL Team Six, collectively known as the National Mission Force.

Recently,U.S. drones killed dozens of Taliban fighters attempting to take over western Farah Province, which borders Iran.

Last month, the U.S. military launched the second highest number of airstrikes in the past six and a half years in Afghanistan.

As the ISIS war in Iraq and Syria winds down, the U.S. military is ramping up operations in Afghanistan.

There are roughly 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, about double the number when Trump took office — far fewer than the 100,000 deployed by former President Barack Obama.

Note to Barack Obama: Playing checkers with the Taliban wasn’t a winning strategy.

H/T to the amazing founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk.

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