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Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 08/16/2010 1:08:31 PM PDT by nickcarraway
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, held out the prospect on Sunday of eventual reconciliation with the Taliban, including negotiations with leaders with “blood on their hands”.
“It doesn’t mean that Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.’ But he said there was “every possibility, I think, that there can be low-and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.” Petraeus, who took command in Kabul following the sacking of his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, famously exploited rifts within Iraq’s Sunni insurgency to turn around a losing US-led war there. He now has less than a year to show results in Afghanistan where what he described as a “Pakhtun insurgency” operating from Pakistan has exposed the weakness of the government in Kabul and the NATO-led force backing it.
But in the interview Petraeus drew attention to vulnerabilities in the insurgency, noting it was “not some kind of monolithic Taliban enemy” but rather a syndicate of insurgent groups that are not subservient to each other. These include the Afghan Taliban in the south, the Haqqani network in the east, the Hezb-e-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistani Taliban, and smaller numbers of al Qaeda and Uzbek fighters. “What is interesting is that the Taliban leads from the rear, as we would say. The Taliban leads from Pakistan,” the general said. “And by the way, the rank and file is just catching on to this. We actually see discussions among them, chatter among them, conversation, wondering where their senior leaders are, and wondering why Mullah Omar hasn’t set foot back in Afghanistan or even been heard from now in months and months and months,” the US commander said.
He said the top priority was to establish security so Afghans can “literally cast a vote for or against the Afghan government, a government that does have to earn legitimacy in their eyes through its actions”. Petraeus suggested that reintegrating the Pakhtuns into the society would be key to a turnaround in Afghanistan.
Petraeus said he reserved the right to tell US President Barack Obama that it is too early to start withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. “The president and I sat down in the Oval Office and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice,” he said.
The US commander said that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is “far buried” in the remote mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan but capturing the “iconic figure” remains a key task. “I don’t think anyone knows where Osama bin Laden is,” he added. Despite the difficulty in locating him, Petraeus said bin Laden “remains an iconic figure and I think capturing or killing him is still a very, very important task for all of those who are engaged in counter-terrorism around the world”.
Citing Pakistan’s recent anti-militant gains, the US commander defended counterinsurgency assistance for the key South Asian ally and discounted the suggestion that some of that aid ends up abetting insurgents fighting American troops in Afghanistan. He blasted as “reprehensible” the release of Afghan war documents, saying that US partners named in them have been put at risk. Petraeus’s comments came in response to a threat by the founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, to make public another batch of secret documents in a “couple of weeks”. agencies
I predict this works out about as well as the “reconciliation” with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did.
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, held out the prospect on Sunday of eventual reconciliation with the Taliban, including negotiations with leaders with “blood on their hands”.
What kool aid is he drinking?
This man ought to stay out of the news and lie low for now, then next spring declare that he knew all along that Obama’s withdrawal plan was nuts.
I thought he might have been a good Presidential candidate for 2012, but I’m not so sure now.
Obamas only way out is to make a deal. He will then abandon Afganistan for another Islamic victory. Petreus sees this for the reality it is. They will probably include a way to develop the mining with Pakistani routes to ship. The Afgani people are really illiterates. Their national game is played with a dead Goat. That tells me all I want to know. If they were going to kill the terrorists they would have already done so.
A deal, you mean something like we have with North Korea?
I am so sick of our polictical leaders getting us into a war and then refuse to fight it as if it was a war.
The time to win the hearts and minds of the civilian population is after they surrender, not while you are fighting them.
Can anyone inform me on how in the world any kind of Democracy like we have in the US could possibly maintain any kind of peace agreement with Sharia Law proponents? It’s a waste time even talking to them. I suggest bombing the crap out of these pagan barbarians where ever they reside.
Now he really is General Betrayus.
Another stooge for Islam like McChrystal. I bet the Saudis underwrote McChrystal teaching gig at Yale.
Iraq and Afghanistan were a lost cause on Nov 2008 when the saudi mole was elected.
Our poor troops since then are penny arcade bears in a shooting gallery.
You mean like Chamberlain reconciled with Hitler?? Surely the general is NOT that stupid.
The General is signaling surrender... obama style.
LLS
“General Patton, paging General George Patton, you are wanted on the courtesy phone, please pick up, urgent!”
While the situations are 180 degrees apart Patton took a lot of crap for re-integrating Nazis into post war German life. However he did so because they were trained in things like running the trains, the telephone network, and the like.
All these Taliban thugs are good for is throwing acid in the faces of school children.
He’s nuts.
Let me run the show.
I ‘d drop One Big Ass Demonstration Bomb, the kind no opponent has seen in over Sixty years and tell them there’s more from where that came from, and they are going to shut up an d play nice, or we’ll clear the whole place.
Also, the ISI in Pakistan know EXACTLY where Bin Laden is, but they don’t want to turn him over and then have the money spigot turned off.
There is nothing in that part of the world that is WORTH ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!
GET OUT!
I wonder what the connection is to “WikiLeaks”.
Well, Bambi said today that he wouldn't extend our mission. Too bad for all the Afghanis who trusted us and really thought we were going to free them from the grip of Islamic radicals.
Maybe their heads can be posted on pikes around the Osama Obama Victory Mosque at Ground Zero. Or maybe we can have group stonings under sharia.
My sons risked their lives. For what? The very animals who’ve cut off heads and set deadly traps for our finest are going become legitimate? What, like Arafat? Get our people out of there if the same guy who runs around in a dirty night gown killing our sons is the same guy we’ll “reintegrate” into Afghanistan.
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