Posted on 07/19/2010 8:17:38 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.
Negotiating with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by Washington.
The Guardian has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.
"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing."
That missing element was talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.
The American rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure last month of General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan.
Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, has reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America's enemies.
America is reviewing its Afghanistan policy which is due for completion in December, but officials .. said feelers had been put out to the Taliban. ..
"It will be messy and could take years," said a diplomatic source.
The change of heart by the US comes as Afghanistan hosts the biggest international gathering in its capital for 40 years, with representatives from 60 countries including Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
The dominant theme of the Kabul conference is "reintegration", which involves reaching out to low-level insurgents to encourage them to lay down their arms.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Here is one huge arse problem with liberalism, whether in the US domestic political form or in the field of international relations: With all due idiocy, it believes wholeheartedly that ‘we’ should talk and negotiate with terrorists, terrorist supporters, etc....... =.=
Talk... ? Chat...? Oh, kibitz, right, my bad...
Actually there is. It's just that you Washington types are pussies.
AND General Petraeus will go along with this?
I remember a time in the not to distant past where the policy was to kill terrorists and to never, ever negotiate with them.
sad, but true...
regards,
Just in time to woo those anti-war lefties back to the voting booths, eh?
The question remains .. How many more thousands or millions dead here will it take.. before we wage a war on those who seek our destruction and not a peace action?
Looks like we got until 2014 to wait for an answer.
Hey lets give them payoff money as well.
Yeah, that’s the ticket...
I’m sure Obammy’s strange animal magnetism will turn the corner with the Taliban.
The Taliban won’t negotiate. They’ll just lie and deceive until they get the Americans out of Afghanistan. And they know that’s what Obama wants more than anything else.
It goes back to Jefferson.
We don’t negotiate with Terrorist’s
Arrogant amateurs making them up as they go along...
taqiyah
Petraeus will not be in A-stan for long. He will be fired by the end of the year, to be replaced by a State Department civvy lacky.
Deja Vu all over again.
In many ways Obama isn’t so different than most of his predecessors over the last 80 years.
What a mess, what a frigging mess.
Exactly, I believe that the rallying cry was, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.