To the Editor:

Re “Trump Scraps Secret Talks With Taliban on Peace Pact” (front page, Sept. 8):

If we leave Afghanistan prematurely, bad things will happen; if we stay, bad things will happen.

A colonel who did eight tours in Afghanistan recently told me his reason for supporting our leaving Afghanistan now: “Too many of my friends lie in Arlington Cemetery.”

If we continue fighting, more will join them, and their brokenhearted children, husbands or wives, mothers and fathers will cry themselves to sleep for many months.

Time to go.

Ed Erwin

Miami

To the Editor:

President Trump is quoted as understandably asking of the Taliban, “ How many more decades are they willing to fight?” The question is key.

For an answer, we might turn to a 1990 interview with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap of Vietnam, who was asked how long he would have fought the Americans. He responded, “ Another 20 years, even a hundred years — as long as it took to win, regardless of cost.”