Saturday, December 31, 2011

IN THE CATEGORY OF WTF???

I guess someone should mention this to the Afghani men being held at Guantanamo because of their connection to the Taliban.....

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration that the Taliban were not necessarily America's enemies.

Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests," Biden was quoted as saying by Newsweek....


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2076564/Taliban-enemy-says-Joe-Biden-US-negotiate-deal-end-Afghanistan-war.html

2 comments:

the talking dog said...

Ah, a trip down "memory-hole lane." Given the impossible situation we set up for ourselves in Afghanistan (reliance on the corrupt and unpopular local criminal and not-so-strong strongman Karzai... not a good move), the only likely way out of Afghanistan [short of the really bad optics of helicopters leaving from the embassy roof] had always been to sell out, and "make piece" with our new best friends, the Taliban. As odious as they are, they have some form of a local following there (certainly in some regions, like Kandahar), and are one of the few forces capable of instilling order in an otherwise chaotic place.

And consistency is no longer a value of any significance, and so, anyone we are holding for life for having given material support to the Taliban we can still hold... well, we just can, so there. Besides... opium trafficking can go on with or without 100 plus thousand US troops.

Anyway, it seems we might need to free up some extra military capacity; even with everyone out of Iraq, if we're tied down with over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, we'll still be caught short viz the coming large scale war with IRAN. And if that means a little revisionist history viz the Taliban, well... so be it.

the talking dog said...

BTW... I meant "piece" and not "peace," because of course, AFG will be split up, with the Taliban handed some large portion of the place in consideration for letting us free up some troops.

Elements in the Pakistani ISI that are pals with the Taliban will not only be happy with this, they'll probably even broker the deal.