“In no way, in any real world, can you imagine an event at Camp David ending with something that you would credibly call a peace process,” Laurel Miller, a former Afghan expert at the State Department who is now the Asia Program director of the International Crisis Group, said. “It’s not an Afghanistan version of the Middle East peace process at Camp David. It’s an exchange of commitments,” one that might open up space for a process among Afghans, hosted by another nation—without the United States in the thick of it…

Trump had hoped to broker an Afghan peace before the Presidential campaign heats up—to convince voters that he knows the art of diplomatic deals. Instead, it could become an election issue. “The whole thing doesn’t quite make sense. It’s just another example of the President treating foreign policy like it’s some kind of game show,” the Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Presidential candidate, said on CNN. “This isn’t a game show—these are terrorists.”…

But a senior official, who worked on Afghanistan in both the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, told me that the Administration has now bestowed credibility on the Taliban. “Inviting an armed insurgent group to Camp David when Afghanistan has an elected government that we’ve supported for eighteen years, that’s a big deal,” the official said. “We’re basically legitimizing an armed insurgent group, which may be unprecedented.”