If the Taliban Thinks You're Looney…
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Harrison
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afghanistan Democrats liberal moderate mujahid naive foreign policy Obama obama administration secretary state hillary clinton taliban Terrorism
Wanted by Obama: moderate terrorists!
If only it were an April Fool’s joke. When will the Democrats learn that reconciliation with an enemy who only wants you dead isn’t possible? During a recent speech in Afghanistan Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an international conference on Afghanistan on Tuesday that those members of the Taliban who abandoned extremism must be granted an “honorable form of reconciliation.”
The Taliban, among other things, want to keep women locked at home and illiterate, forbid television and music on the radio and now the Obama Administration wants to make nice with them? Such is the folly of Liberal diplomacy… if we try and be “friends” with people who have completely different world views the U.S. will somehow take on a more favorable view in the eyes of the world. What will really happen is this stance will be viewed as weakness and those who oppose us will try and exploit it. Predicatably, the Taliban weren’t buying it:
“This matter was also raised in the past,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, referring to comments last month by Obama, who spoke of reaching out to moderate Taliban.
“They have to go and find the moderate Taliban, their leader and speak to them. This is a lunatic idea,” Mujahid said by telephone from an unknown location.
Finding a “moderate” Taliban is like finding a moderate Nazi or a moderate fundamentalist… either they don’t exist or there are so few of them it won’t make any difference as those people are not the ones running the show. In short, it is weakness, something an enemy is looking for in order to advance their agenda.
This is not the first time the Obama Administration has tried to reach out to our enemies to, as Liberals call it, find common ground. In January the same thing was tried with Iran (the results were the same):
US President Barack Obama’s offer to talk to Iran shows that America’s policy of “domination” has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
This type of optimistic (I would say naive) view of foreign policy was illustrated by President Obama in his call for a world without nuclear weapons:
Just hours after North Korea launched a long-range rocket, President Barack Obama called for “a world without nuclear weapons” and said the United States has a “moral responsibility ” to lead the way, as the only nation ever to use them.
Forget for a moment that the use of nuclear weapons against Japan not only ended WWII in the Pacific but also saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. In making such a silly pledge does President Obama not realize that having a nuclear weapon is the best way for a smaller country to have leverage over a larger, more powerful one? It might be a noble goal to rid the world of nukes but it’s not going to happen and making such a pledge again shows a naive view of the world.
For President Obama, it seems, style trumps substance. Meanwhile, our enemies continue to laugh at us and plot a way to exploit the softness they see in the new foreign policy this country appears to be charting.
If you are interested in seeing the type of people we are truly fighting against read this post about them.
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12:12 PM
The true irony, of course, is that we’re talking about cozying up to a group that absolutely hates the left. That’s like the hens “reaching out” to the fox in hopes that the fox will be a bit more polite if he’s made welcome.
Strangely, that tactic doesn’t work…
2:18 PM
I understand your position. However, there is a school of thought enhanced by the work of William Zartman, Professor of International Studies at Hopkins University, who says that by negotiating with a moderate faction of a terrorists group, it strengthens the moderate faction within the group, thereby giving more credence to the moderate faction to control the agenda of the whole group. Supplanting extremism is the idea. Whether it will work or not-only time will tell. Zartman also believes this sort of tactic will force terrorists groups to splinter-leaving them to fight it out amongst themselves-weakening their very base-with the hope that the moderate faction wins, while we sit back and watch. If we pick the winner, then we negotiate, if not, then we don’t. If the wrong group wins the internal struggle, the group is then isolated from the community at large who generally are seeking peace. It sorts of makes them pariahs in their own community.
2:21 PM
get yourself educated; make then a statement, and then look at the logica of your rantings.
i lived in nyc, miami, irvini, travelled several times all over the states, and Europe, South America, Africa and Asia and I call you ‘ignorant’….
soit
6:08 PM
Hans, When you learn how to craft a cogent response please comment again!
4:58 PM
This is just stupid, finding common ground is also known as negotiating. Negotiating is meeting the opposition in the middle. Hmmm….. they want all of us dead; meeting in the middle means only half of us dead. Simple lets just decide which half gets to live and we’re all set.
This Zartman guy sounds like another liberal university nut like Ward Chrchill. Teachers don’t know jack about this stuff or they’d be in charge of it.
Oh wait he probably didn’t make a big enough campaign contribution for a cabinet position.
In a nut shell these people are willing to die if they can take us with them. You can not make nice with people like that. They don’t want to talk just kill. See the picture of the men with guns? It says it all.
6:26 PM
ndfenceofobama, I understand the theory however the biggest flaw with this theory is that Muslims are flocking to the Pakistan/Afghanistan area from all over the world to join in jihad. The most radical attain leadership postions… the rest are either humble foot soldiers or are rejected. From what I understand, the vast majority of them are resource poor and cannot form their own splinter groups without a wealthy backer. The funds seem to either come from the leader (Osama bin Laden for example), a state (Iran, for example), or local clerics who run Islamic schools. In the later case, the funds run through many different levels. The U.S. has very poor intel on the ground so “picking a winner” would be very difficult.
Also, the jihad is ideologically based. These people oppose everything that the U.S. stands for from women’s and gay’s rights to the simple fact that we are not an Islamic nation.
In the case of the Stauffenberg-led resistance in Nazi Germany (where this tactic you mention could have met with success) there was an established state with a structure. The very nature of these jihadists is completely different and even the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, which we supported against the Taliban, was itself made up of warlords with competing interests and wasn’t a cohesive unit.
Groups such as the Taliban will wait it out for 5 years, 20 years, 50 years. They will outlast the politics of today because their struggle is based on how they interpret the Koran, which they consider to be timeless. They will not waver nor will they tolerate members who do. Should the U.S. find these “moderate” Taliban it would be very risky to lend them support in the hopes that once they took power they would not repeat what has already gone before it.
There is no good solution short of killing every one of them, which is not possible. Leaving them in isolation is not possible because they will always find a reason to fight against the West therefore we could never retreat to the degree that would “please” them.
Like a predator that can smell an opening, having the U.S. government try to “reach out” to them will only result, I feel, in us being branded as weak cowards ripe for attack.
Thanks for your comment.
4:28 AM
@ cracked world
True, a handful of crazies are willing to kill us all to get what they want, but the Afghan Taliban don’t want us all dead, they just want us out of their home turf so they can run things the way they want to. I believe the Clinton idea is called divide and conquer, a strategy that has some value. Bottom line, we can’t kill then all so sooner or later we will either have to fight our way out or talk our way out. Bush wouldn’t even think about diplomacy, which is like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
I just watched Charlie Wilson’s War and if you haven’t seen it watch it all the way to the very end where he talks about what happened after we “won” the war.
As for nuclear weapons, Obama was referring primarily to Russia, and since Russia has the biggest pile of loose cannonballs likely to come into the hands of terrorists then it follows that getting Russia to reduce its stockpile of nuclear weapons is essential to our security. What is so crazy about that?
Windroot’s last blog post..Things I’m Sick of Hearing About
9:45 AM
Leaving the Taliban alone will only recreate the situation that happened years before 9/11… Afghanistan will become a haven for terrorists. Bad idea. And during Bill Clinton’s term we had two al Qaeda bombings of embassies in Africa, we had the U.S.S. Cole bombed, Osama bin Laden declared war three times against the U.S., 1993 WTC bombing, and the Khobar Towers bombing as well. Heck of a job, Billy.
Regarding “Charlie Wilson’s War” here are the facts:
Reagan’s War, Not Charlie Wilson’s
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, December 24, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Media Bias: Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11.
If you think Hollywood’s idea of a Christmas movie being one about the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is strange, even stranger is the plot line. “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote.
Charlie Wilson was a pro-abortion, Equal Rights Amendment-supporting congressman widely known as “the liberal from Lufkin.” To his credit, he did play a role in facilitating support to the Afghan mujahadeen. But it is he who should be the historical footnote.
In his book, “Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” Lou Cannon notes how Reagan “expressed revulsion of the brutal destruction of Afghan villages and such Soviet policies as the scattering of mines disguised as toys that killed and maimed Afghan children.” He did not need much convincing to aid the Afghan resistance.
Cannon credits Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle and CIA Director William Casey with allaying any concern that providing Stinger missiles to the mujahadeen might lead to the missiles’ capture and copying by the Soviets. Also involved, says Cannon, was a bipartisan coalition “led by Texas Democrat Charlie Wilson in the House and New Hampshire Republican Gordon Humphrey in the Senate.”
So you have at least five players, including Reagan, involved — four of them Republican conservatives. Ikle notes: “Senior people in the Reagan administration, the president, Bill Casey, (Defense Secretary Caspar) Weinberger and their aides deserve credit for the successful Afghan covert action program, not just Charlie Wilson.” So guess which one Hollywood makes a movie about?
The movie is based on the book by former “60 Minutes” staffer George Crile. Crile’s credits include the infamous 1982 CBS documentary alleging that Gen. William Westmoreland led a conspiracy to mislead America about the Vietnam War. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin of “West Wing” fame.
Wilson’s chief ally in the film is CIA agent Gust Avrakotos who, like Wilson, is portrayed as a enthusiastic supporter of providing the Stingers. But Ikle says, the CIA bureaucracy initially fought against the idea and that Wilson was lukewarm on the matter. Ikle says both came around only after the rebels actually started bringing down the Soviet helicopter gunships.
The movie also perpetuates the left-wing myth that the covert operation funded Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks. Reagan-era officials such as Ikle say Osama never got funding or weapons from the U.S. and that he didn’t launch his terror war until after U.S. involvement and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
It was Ronald Reagan, not Charlie Wilson, who gave the order to provide the mujahadeen with the Stinger missiles that denied the Soviet air supremacy and turned the tide of battle after 1986. Yet in the movie, the likes of Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer (director Mike Nichol’s wife) are more prominently mentioned.
To be fair, the movie doesn’t mention Jimmy Carter either. It was his naivete about Communist expansion that led the Soviets to invade Afghanistan in the first place. Had Reagan not beaten Carter in 1980 there would have been no Stingers and no victory in the Cold War.
But don’t expect a movie about Reagan’s victory over communism or Carter’s surrender to it.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=441207&Ntt=charlie+wilson's+war
The article now requires a subscription but the movie is pure Liberal Hollywood fantasy. If you type this into Google:
charlie wilson’s war ibd.com
Then click on “cached” you can see the full article.