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O, Appeasement! O, Villainy!

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be […]

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished we’ll be successful.” ~The International Herald-Tribune

Successful in what exactly?  Does this make them the Retreat-o-publicans?  Of course, it’s not clear to me what it would mean to bring “the Taliban” into a “more transparent type government.”  Now if what we’re talking about is pulling in Pashtun warlords who have adhered to the Taliban because of ethnic and family ties, whom we are now separating from the Taliban leadership, that might make a lot more sense.  Winning ordinary Pashtuns away from the Taliban would be very wise indeed, if you can manage it, and if that is what Frist meant he would be making a lot of sense. 

But if “the Taliban”–as in the armed religious militia/movement now based in Pakistan–came into government, they would eventually run said government, which would, unless I am very much confused, mean that the last five years will have changed nothing–except that some hundreds of Western soliders will have died for nothing and Afghanistan would revert more or less to the status quo ante.  If there were some way that you could extract massive concessions from the Taliban in exchange for their participation, including handing over Bin Laden et al., it might be something to be considered as a bad-but-unavoidable option, but it seems entirely unlikely that we are in any position to dictate terms to the Taliban, especially since they are clearly receiving support and have a refuge in Pakistan–and because of our awkward bargain with Musharraf we cannot do anything about this. 

In short, it seems to me that Frist cannot really be serious when he says this, or he is being very clumsy with his language.  Obviously, yes, a “political solution” is needed, but “the Taliban” have no need of a political solution in the absence of credible resistance and do not need to make a deal.  In the end, they can wait NATO out and then resume their struggle for control of the country.    

Politically, of course, Frist has probably just done everything he could do to dispirit the legions of jingo voters back home, and the Kossacks are taking delight in all this. 

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