Posted on 01/24/2010 9:13:47 PM PST by UAConservative
LONDON — The NATO commander in Afghanistan said his troop surge could lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, in an interview published Monday ahead of a major conference this week on the war.
US General Stanley McChrystal also told the Financial Times he hopes his allies will leave Thursday's meeting in London with a "renewed commitment" to the increasingly bloody conflict.
By using the 30,000-strong surge in US troops to secure territory stretching from the Taliban's southern heartlands to Kabul, the general said he aims to weaken the insurgency so much its leaders would accept a political settlement.
"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," said McChrystal.
"I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome," he added.
Asked is he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in the country, the general said: "I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past."
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Churchill quotes are the best.
McChrystal is taking orders from Obama. This comes straight from the WH. Same with the furor about the Trijicon sights.
Hand-picked by The Nigerian. Should we expect anything else?
Yes, General, that may very well be true from your standpoint (or at least that which you've been told to have), but to imply that that thought process can be sold to the Taliban belies a deadly naivete. Don't fall into the trap that the psychotic nihilism of those vermin can be negotiated away at the bargaining table. They, like all jihadis, set as their baseline the death of all of us. They have to be killed.
If this is the guy leading our troops.BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have not seen the trick behind this.
The ONLY intelligent words I’ve EVER heard Ahnold utter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V30tyaXv6EI
I cannot BELEIVE a General of the United States Army would say something like this!
Thank God it wasn’t a MARINE saying that, or we’d all be sunk...
You betcha. I’m retired Army. I totally respect Marines.
Will he come back from meeting with them, wave a piece of paper and call out “peace in our time?”
“First, the Taliban must cough up a live al-Zawahiri [and UBL’s remains]. Then and only then, should the Coalition even think about letting them off the hook.”
If only it could be true.
Yea, like they are not going to lie to become part of the govt. This is almost as pathetic as the Pentagon erasing Islam from the Fort Hood shootings.
McChrystal, Casey and Hammond are all clueless.
We understand Islam and McCrystal clearly does not. It calls for perpetual war and encourages lying. He is a fool.
What??!!!
I hope this doesn’t happen. It would be a victory for the Taliban and a defeat for the US. No other way to spin it really.
The Taliban would soon take over the country again and go back to the old, pre-2001 ways.
UnFReakingbelievable.
FT: Do you think then that it would be conceivable that this conflict could end with senior figures in the Taliban perhaps playing a role in a future government in Kabul?
Gen McChrystal: It’s hard to speculate about individuals, but I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focused on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan, under a constitutional fair umbrella, then I think it’s likely that it will be a wide participation.
FT: So it sounds from what you’re saying that you wouldn’t be on principle opposed to the idea that some of the insurgent leaders that you are fighting now might one day be part of a future administration in Kabul?
Gen McChrystal: It wouldn’t be mind to choose, it would be the Afghan people’s decision to choose. But I personally believe that the Afghan people will want to represent themselves from the entire Afghan population.
FT: The implication seems to be that although it’s not your job to negotiate with insurgents, or determine the shape of a future government, your personal feeling is that it may be the case that one day members of the Taliban are in Kabul, and there’s some sort of peaceful settlement, and that’s acceptable.
Gen McChrystal: As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting, and that what we need to do – all of us – is to do the fighting necessary to shape conditions where people can get on with their lives, and everybody can make a decision where fighting’s not the direction that it needs to go in. You just really don’t make progress, politically, during fighting. What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.
The Chump-in-Chief put Stanley in his place via his dithering over troop strength.
If they don't believe what the Taliban believe what makes them Taliban? Did they just chop off women's hands and cut their tongues out in a 'go-along-to-get-along' gesture to the real Taliban?
Just how much are we going to have to pay the part-time/bought Taliban to be not-Taliban and for how long? When they grow unhappy with their payments will they just form a union of part-time/bought Talibanis and go on strike for a bigger bribe? Is that what 0bammi's offering them, a stake in SEIU?
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