Free Republic

Access has been gained here in Kabul to two former high-ranking officials of the now-deposed Taliban government to hear their view of the possibility of an opening for dialogue. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, and Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who served as foreign minister during the Taliban regime, confirmed in separate interviews that such talks were feasible, but that they would need to begin with a fundamental understanding that the view of this conflict looks very different from an Afghan-Taliban perspective.

Growing up we all believe what we want to. For years my son believed that there were monsters under his bed at night, my daughter believed that a unicorn would show up for her to ride away. Both of them believed in the tooth fairy (there was one of those, it was me in a costume). Part of the growing process is that we realize that these childish myths are not real by any means. Surprisingly, there is one childish myth that many otherwise intelligent adults cling on to. That's the myth that there are moderate members of the Taliban....

During his electoral campaign in 2008, Barack Obama said repeatedly that if he was elected president of the United States of America, he would talk to the Taliban. At the time, Obama’s rival, Ms. Hillary Clinton described Obama’s wish as “naïve and irresponsible”. Now she is Obama’s Secretary of State and has to obey her boss. But is it really possible to appease the Taliban?

President Obama indicated that “since we are losing the war in Afghanistan, we will need to make accommodation with the more moderate elements of the winning side. While hard-liners in the United States would like to portray all Taliban as incorrigible religious fanatics, I believe there is some room for hope.” “My staff has advised me that they have established contacts with Taliban leaders who have less extreme views,” Obama said. “For example, some of the more moderate views seem to suggest that Islamic law could be fulfilled with mere disfigurement for errant women and the amputation of tongues rather...

Reporting on President Barack Obama’s 35-minute conversation with The New York Times abroad the presidential jet, United States One, Helene Cooper and Sheryl Gay Stolberg quoted him in the March 7 issue of the paper as saying that the US was not winning the war in Afghanistan and might reach out to the ‘moderate’ elements among the Taliban. The process, Mr Obama indicated, might be similar to the one in Iraq where success in turning the war in America’s favour during the last two years was due as much to an increase in the number of troops as weaning moderate...

President Obama wants to open negotiations with moderate factions of the Taliban. On first reflection, that sounds reasonable. Something like this worked in Iraq, after all. Obama says that “part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq.” And “there may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region,” although he grants that “the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex.”

Won't you please donate to the Joe Biden Brain Transplant Fund.

There's such a thing as a contradiction in terms: Obama's "adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined" while preaching the message of "fiscal responsibility" certainly qualifies. Hence "Obama budget" and "fiscal responsibility" is oxymoronic. Another terrific new oxymoron that Obama has added to the lexicon is "moderate Taliban": NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is open to the idea of reaching out to moderate elements of the Taliban, The New York Times reported on Saturday. "Moderate elements of the Taliban"? Did FDR reach out to "moderate Nazis"?...