Joke of the Year: Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO Support Peace Process With Taliban

I'm serious...this is probably the biggest story of lunacy on the net right now, as account after account is going up about how the Afghans have sat down with Taliban leaders to discuss some parameters for peace in Afghanistan and that now, it is reported that U.S. and NATO officials have aided in bringing the sides together.

For what? So the Taliban can lie across a table instead of lieing through an internet message or a phone call? You'd think by now, these high up security officials in the U.S. and NATO would have gotten sick of finding egg on their faces every six months but apparently not. Apparently the Obama administration is all in on self-humiliation.

From the story at The Nation:

Today, it’s widely reported (in the Post, the Times, RFE/RL, and many other outlets) that the movement of Taliban leaders from Pakistan to Afghanistan and back was facilitated by the United States, NATO, and ISAF. At a NATO meeting in Brussels, Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates said that the United States would do “whatever it takes” to support Karzai’s plan to reconcile with the Taliban.

According to AP, the head of the newly appointed High Peace Council in Afghanistan, former president Burnahuddin Rabbani—no softie when it comes to the Taliban—said that he's "convinced that the Taliban are ready to negotiate peace."

That’s a direct shift from the administration’s refusal to support Karzai’s peace talks proposals since 2009, especially his January 2010 suggestion in London, which caught US officials off guard and led some, including Richard (“Don’t call me Dick!") Holbrooke to fulminate against the idea. Specifically, Holbrooke denounced the idea of taking top Taliban leaders off the UN blacklist, something that many Taliban officials and supporters of peace talks believe is critical to facilitate talks.

Okay, this story's been out for about a week or so and the reason I am finally addressing it is because I'm hearing MORE about it on the MSM instead of less of it, like I expected. You see, sometimes I'm a fool. Sometimes I revert back to this belief that someone in the U.S. government and in NATO actually has a brain.

Here's the deal. Real simple. The Taliban coming to talk about a peace settlement in Afghanistan would be like Ted Bundy having come to a teen age girls' pajama party as a chaperone. It would be like Ted Kennedy having spoken at a temperance league event. It would be like Barack Hussein Obama addressing the national meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Taliban want peace in Afghanistan like I want to live under Communism and work in a potato field.

Let me list some observations why we should NEVER, EVER sit down with the Taliban for ANY kind of talks:

• In Pakistan, the Taliban there signed over two dozen peace agreements with the Pakistani government and military over a period from 2007 thru 2009. Not ONE of those agreements did the Taliban ever live up to and to my best recollection, the longest that peace last was about 45 days.


• The Taliban worship the most extreme version of Islam and in that worship, they follow to a tee the fact that islam MUST dominate and that jihad must be carried out. Allah and Mo make no mentions of "agreements" or "compromise."


• The Taliban have had it pretty cushy over the past two years as America has floundered with military troop levels and policy in the Afghan War - why should they want peace? They are actually winning at this point in many experts' view.


• The Taliban lie like you and me breathe, eat and drink water.


• The Taliban once ruled Afghanistan from Kabul - they had a stranglehold on the people and complete ownership of the opium empire. The Taliban were able to enforce the strictest Sharia law in the world and get awfully rich at the same time. The Taliban don't want some seats in an Afghan government...they don't want a couple of provinces...they don't want to go to work as stable boys....they WANT WHAT THEY HAD!

I don't know why it is so difficult for everyone to get that last point - but it's all too similar to the situation in the Middle East where the Palestinians and Hamas and Syria and Iran want nothing to do with a peace settlement with Israel - they want Israel destroyed and cast to the four corners of the globe. But yet, our minions in the government make the trek up the hill every fucking year to pretend that peace can be made.

I'm actually in favor of talks with the Taliban if they agree to have every single leader and commander in their movement at a single meeting...and I mean including Mullah Omar. I want them to leave no one home to mind the cave. Then as they all sit in that great hall for the meeting, all Afghans and Westerners take a break and leave and that building is hit with six 2,000 pound JDAMs. That's the kind of "talk" that the Taliban deserve.

NATO Backs Taliban Peace Talks


Momentum is building on peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan.

Not long ago, I reported on General Petraeus’s comments that the Taliban was signaling an interest in talking peace with President Karzai’s government. It was also reported that not only had talks gotten started, but that the talks involved senior Taliban representatives who could speak for the Quetta Shura Taliban, the top leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan. And it was reported that sometime last summer, the Obama administration shifted policy, abandoning its previous view that talks with the Taliban would be useless until the insurgents were pushed to the brink of military defeat, and that now the White House is ready to fully engage in search of a political settlement.

Today, it’s widely reported (in the Post, the Times, RFE/RL, and many other outlets) that the movement of Taliban leaders from Pakistan to Afghanistan and back was facilitated by the United States, NATO, and ISAF. At a NATO meeting in Brussels, Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates said that the United States would do “whatever it takes” to support Karzai’s plan to reconcile with the Taliban.

According to AP, the head of the newly appointed High Peace Council in Afghanistan, former president Burnahuddin Rabbani—no softie when it comes to the Taliban—said that he's "convinced that the Taliban are ready to negotiate peace."

That’s a direct shift from the administration’s refusal to support Karzai’s peace talks proposals since 2009, especially his January 2010 suggestion in London, which caught US officials off guard and led some, including Richard (“Don’t call me Dick!") Holbrooke to fulminate against the idea. Specifically, Holbrooke denounced the idea of taking top Taliban leaders off the UN blacklist, something that many Taliban officials and supporters of peace talks believe is critical to facilitate talks.

Until recently, the United States supported only “reintegration,” that is, the inclusion of low-level Taliban defectors into Afghan society. But it opposed “reconciliation,” meaning full-on peace talks with the Taliban organization. That seems to be changing.

Until now, the United States has demanded that the Taliban accept the Afghan constitution, renounce violence, and reject Al Qaeda. The Taliban, for its part, has one central condition: the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from the country. The July 2011 deadline that President Obama has set for the start of an American withdrawal could easily serve as a starting point for a deal with the Taliban over an American departure, and Taliban leaders have said so.

Despite the postive noises from Gates and Clinton, it's unlikely that either is behind the shift in American policy. (Indeed, it's good that Gates will be leaving the administration soon, since his appointment was probably the single worst that Obama made on after being elected.) If anyone is behind the policy change, it's Obama himself, now fortified by Tom Donilon, the new national security adviser, who is widely known to be a skeptic of the war. In fact, according to Bob Woodward's latest book, Obama's Wars, Gates said that if Donilon ever became national security adviser it would be a "disaster." (Goodbye, Mr. Gates!) The other leading skeptic in the White House is Vice President Biden, and Donilon's wife is a senior official on Biden's staff.