This is simply unbelievable.
Oh wait, he doesn't need to.
Ugh! I’m about to lose my lunch!
Any comment from NOW yet?
Of interest:
There is nothing called the ‘moderate Taliban’
The Times of India
12 April 2009, 12:44am IST
If necessity is the mother of invention then politics is often the father. Barack Obama has invented a phrase that did not exist on January 20, the day he became president. Anxious to win a war through the treasury rather than the Pentagon, he has discovered something called the “moderate Taliban” in Afghanistan. Joe Biden, his vice president, has found the mathematical coordinates of this oxymoron: only 5% of the Taliban are “extremists”.
Welcome to Obama’s first big mistake.
The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not simply against some bearded men and beardless boys who have been turned into suicide missionaries. The critical conflict is against the ideology of a chauvinistic theocracy that seeks to remould the Muslim world into a regressive region from which it can assault every aspect of modernity, whether that be in political space or the social sphere.
Washington has a single dimension definition of “moderate”: anyone who stops an active, immediate war against the US is a “moderate”. Let me introduce him to a couple of “moderate Taliban”. They are now world famous, having been on every national and international news channel these past few days, stars of a video clip from Swat. Two of them had pinned down a 17-year-old girl called Chand Bibi, while a third, his face shrouded, lashed her with a whip 37 times on suspicion of being seen with a man who was not her father or brother.
Obama should record the screams of Chand Bibi and play them to his daughters as the “moderate” music to which he wants to dance in his Afghan war.
These Taliban are “moderate” by the norms of the Obama Doctrine: they have come to a deal with America through Islamabad. Pakistani troops are not engaged in their medieval haven, nor are American Drones bombing their homes. All that remains, one presumes, is that they are placed on the Pentagon payroll as insurance of their ceasefire.
Perhaps, in their desperate search for moderation, Obama and Islamabad will promote the denial being manipulated into public discourse. The unbearable Swat-lashing video is now described as fake. It would be nice to know the names of the actors who played such a convincing part in the filming of this ‘fake’. Chand Bibi has “denied” any such incident. Sure: but was any doctor sent to check the scars?
Such compromise with ‘moderation’ has also taken place next door, in Afghanistan, under the watchful eye of American ally Hamid Karzai. He has just signed a family law bill which compels Afghan women to take permission from their husbands before going to a doctor, seeking education, or getting a job. The husband has become complete master of the bedroom. Custody of children can only go to fathers or grandfathers; women have no rights. A member of Afghanistan’s upper house, Senator Humaira Namati, has called this law “worse than during the Taliban (government). Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam”. It makes no difference to the Taliban, of course, that the Quran expressly forbids Muslim men from forcing decisions on their wives “against their will”. Karzai’s justification is the usual one: politics. He wanted the support of theocrats in the election scheduled for August this year. Under pressure, there is talk of a review but no one is sure what that means.
If it’s democracy, it must be “moderate”, right?
One can understand a post-Iraq America’s reluctance towards wars that seem straight out of Kipling. But we in the region have to live with the political consequences of superpower intervention, and the casual legitimacy that Obama is offering to a destructive ideology will create blowback that spreads far beyond the geography of “Afpak”.
Benazir Bhutto and the ISI did not create the Taliban in the winter of 1994 for war against America. Its purpose was to defeat fractious Afghan warlords, and establish a totalitarian regime that would equate Afghanistan’s strategic interests to Pakistan’s. The ISI conceived an “Afpak” long before the idea reached the outer rim of Washington’s thinking. Pakistan worked assiduously to widen the Taliban’s legitimacy and would have drawn America into the fold through the oil-pipeline siren song if Osama bin Laden had not blown every plan apart. In some essentials, things have not changed. Pakistan’s interests still lie in a pro-Islamabad Taliban regime in Kabul. The “moderation” theory is a ploy to provide war-weary America with an exit point. India’s anxieties will be offered a smile in public and a shrug in private.
History is uncomfortable with neat closures. Neither the Taliban nor Pakistan are what they were in 1994: the former
is much stronger, the latter substantially weaker. The fall of Kabul to the Taliban this time could be a curtain raiser to the siege of Islamabad.
There is nothing called a moderate lash, or backlash, President Obama.
OGBSM!!!
Insanity.
In case you and I missed it.
...the Taliban are now part of the political fabric of Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here on Friday, but the group must be prepared to play a legitimate role before it can reconcile with the Afghan government.Thanks ColdOne.
Zero is a muslim, what else would you expect.
ping
Thats a LIE Obama said NO such thing!
What he did say:
Obama administration says “Taliban must take legitimate role in Washington, D.C."
sarc off
Note: The following text is a quote:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=57668
Gates Reaches Out to Future Pakistani Military Leaders
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 22, 2010 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took his message of shared challenge and commitment today to Pakistan’s rising military leaders attending the prestigious Pakistan National Defense University.
“The main reason I’m here today is to have a conversation – to hear your thoughts and to answer any questions you may have about us – about our goals and future plans concerning this region,” Gates said in opening his remarks.
Gates noted the far-ranging strategic relationship between the United States and Pakistan, but focused his remarks on the two countries’ military relationship – one he conceded the United States mistakenly cut off in the early 1990s due to short-sighted U.S. legislative and policy decisions.
“Perhaps the greatest consequence of these choices was the severing of military-to-military relations,” he said.
The result, he said, was a “very real and very understandable trust deficit – one that has made it more difficult for us to work together to confront a common threat of extremism.”
The United States is ready to invest “whatever time and energy is takes” to change that, he said, and forge a genuine, lasting partnership with Pakistan.
Rebuilding relationships with this current generation of Pakistani officers will take years rather than months, he said, and require openness, transparency and continuous engagement on both sides.
“You cannot rebuild trust through a speech or rhetoric,” but rather, through actions, Gates told Pakistani print journalists earlier today.
The two militaries have a lot to learn from each other, Gates told the officers. They’re already starting these lessons, through expanded joint training exercises, and operationally, as they cooperatively deal with extremism along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
The troop surge in Afghanistan is intended to put more pressure on the Taliban and reverse what Gates conceded is a “deteriorating security situation” there. He acknowledged concern within Pakistan that the increased U.S. presence will lead to more attacks there.
But confronting the terrorist syndicate that threatens the region requires pressuring all the associated groups on both sides of the border.
“We have a regional problem here,” Gates told Pakistani reporters earlier today. “It is going to take a regional level of cooperation to deal with it.”
This reality, he told the military officers, will require Pakistan’s military to do even more in the coming years.
“As uniformed leaders, you will be responsible for preparing the military for the future,” he told the officers, sharing some of the lessons the U.S. military has learned about reshaping and reforming itself to meet new and evolving threats.
Just as the U.S. military transformed to face these new challenges, rather than fight a conventional conflict, Gates said Pakistan’s will have to change, too, to ensure it has the proper skill sets and equipment to fight along the Afghan border and in the tribal areas.
“As the future leaders of the military, you have a tremendous responsibility – to your fellow troops, and most important, to all your countrymen,” he challenged the officers.
The United States is committed to doing all it can to assist this process through a variety of means, as Pakistan desires, he said throughout his two days of sessions here.
“We are in this car together, but the Pakistanis are in the driver’s seat and have their foot on the accelerator,” he told Pakistani print journalists today. “And that is fine with me.”
One important way to share capabilities is through solid military-to-military ties, Gates said.
These will strengthen the other elements of the two countries’ broad strategic relationship, he said, providing a foundation on which to “renew, reinforce and strengthen the bonds of trust between our people and our nations.”
After presenting his prepared remarks, Gates dismissed the media from the room so he and the Pakistani officers could have an open exchange.
Their questions ran the gamut, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters after the session.
One officer asked Gates to explain his statement earlier this week in New Delhi, where he said India demonstrated “great restraint and statesmanship” following the 2008 Mumbai bombings, but could be hard-pressed not to react more strongly – even violently— if a similar incident occurred again.
Another asked Gates if the United States would be willing to intervene to relieve long-simmering Indian-Pakistani tensions – something Gates said both countries have expressed they’d rather deal with themselves.
Several of the questions concerned Afghanistan – from Gates’ thoughts about reconciliation with the Taliban, to how to grow and sustain the Afghan national army despite lack of Afghan resources to support the effort.
One of the more provocative participants challenged Gates about the difficulties “the American war” in Afghanistan has put on Pakistan. “The tone of it was, … ‘We are in this mess because of you,’” Morrell said.
Gates “took great exception” to the comment, telling the officer problems created by the Taliban government in Afghanistan, as well as al Qaida and its affiliates, were going to impact Pakistan.
“It was only a matter of time before they were dragged into it as well, because al Qaida had designs on a caliphate” that inevitably included Pakistan, Morrell said. “The notion that you could be immune from them – that grand plan – is not realistic,” he said.
Morrell characterized the session as “very cordial and respectful,” but also “very candid,” with “no-holds-barred questions and answers.”
These, he said, are the kind of engagements Gates seeks out to promote clearer communication and understanding about the United States and its intentions.
“This is all part of his effort to sort of dispel myths, debunk conspiracy theories, puncture rumors and try to be as open and honest as he can be in hopes of trying to get through some of the nonsense,” Gates said. “And I think it’s appreciated.”
Gates was particularly looking forward to his National Defense University visit during his Pakistan visit, Morrell told reporters before leaving Washington.
Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani received military education at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. However, as Gates noted during his NDU address, most of the Pakistani forces he leads have had little or no personal interaction with the U.S. military.
Biographies:
Robert M. Gates
Related Sites:
Special Report: Travels With Gates
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President Ubiquitous - a.k.a. P.U.
This could be a viable option IF (and that’s a huge IF) the Taliban could be trusted to be anything other than violent butchers bent on slaughtering in the name of Allah.
They are not, though.
Not to mention, this could spur a Muslim offensive as in the case of our withdrawal from Mogadishu. They will clearly see that if they can just hold on long enough, we will run away.
However, that eventuality may be unavoidable as Muslims are the biggest $h!t-talkers there ever were, so even if we stayed in Afghanstan for 100 years and finally pulled out, some rock-throwing, cave-living, goat-humping POS would call it a victory for Islam.
The big problem here is that Obama’s only doing it for his own political gain as an expedited “end” to the war, as another FReeper pointed out. Withdraw under the banner of “reconciliation,” the Taliban are our friends, AQ has been wiped out, and Obama has now won the overseas contingency operation.
This cannot possibly end well for us. Even if it takes them a century, they will retaliate. Bet on it.
This just proves Obama’s an angry Muslim. He is angry at what he perceives as America’s unholy assault on Islam.
Not seeing the surprise here, this lametard jack squat administrations, as with most lametard liberal idiots, have long been giving terrorist and terrorist supporting groups and organization a poltical voice.....simply another offshoot of their appease and dialogue strategy of allegedly ending political violence and conflict. Bottom line, it don;t work, but as par, they continue on in their unicorn and rainbow dreams thinking.