Talking with the Taliban

Sometimes, I can roll through my dead-tree copy of Time in five minutes. Occasionally, it takes two hours. Sometimes there's stuff good enough to pass on to you.

I like to get the actual magazine probably because I'm old-fashioned enough to enjoy reading stuff that's not on a screen. Also, I get access to their website. I'm not sure if non-subscribers get the same access to that that I do.

Money saving tip: If you get a blow-in out of a copy of the magazine, you can get a 1-year subscription for ten bucks. When renewal time rolls around, they'll want about fifty bucks to renew. Fuck that. I just go back to the newsstand and get another blow-in and get another ten dollar sub. I can miss a coupla issues for forty bucks.

But I digress. This is about the goat humpers.

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai embarks on his second five-year term, he maintains that his primary agenda is to bring the war in Afghanistan to a peaceful close through negotiations with members of the Taliban insurgency. Karzai has gone so far as to invite his "Taliban brothers" to "embrace their land" and join him in talks. The U.S. too is growing weary of the war. As President Barack Obama finalizes his new strategy for Afghanistan and deliberates over how many more troops he should send to the front, he is facing pressure to define a clear exit strategy. What was once anathema — talking to an enemy that was overthrown by U.S. forces in 2001 in retaliation for sheltering Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network — is now gaining acceptance, as the generals realize that military tactics alone will not win this war. For many U.S., European and U.N. diplomats as well as Afghan officials, talking with the Taliban seems to be the fastest, and perhaps only, way out of the quagmire.

Is it really? Or is a dialogue with the Taliban just another dead end?

Karzai's gonna end up talking to them even if we don't. Speak into the AK-47, Hamid.

The Taliban leadership, needless to say, has greeted all this with a snort of derision. "The mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries," said Mullah Brader Akhund in a statement. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed." Such a denunciation was to be expected. But even those who back the plan worry that Karzai's corruption-riddled government is so detested that money and jobs will not be enough, on their own, to woo fighters to switch sides. "Paying the low-level [Taliban] may work temporarily, but it won't solve the main problems," says Ishaq Nizami, the former head of the TV and Radio Directorate under the Taliban regime. "There is so much corruption and no laws. In many areas the Taliban have been able to bring security and justice, which the government has not done. Even if some fighters turn, they will turn back again when they understand that their lives are not better." For reintegration to work, in other words, Afghanistan needs to have a government worth fighting for. So far it does not.

[...] So if they are going to disarm, they need to be confident that the side they are joining will stay and win — otherwise, desertion could be a death sentence.

Trouble is, that means making the sort of guarantee that the U.S. and its allies shy away from. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that the U.S. is "not interested in staying [in Afghanistan]" and has "no long-term stake there," she probably — if inadvertently — caused fence sitters to reconsider their options. [...]

There you have it - "If I go with you and you split, which you will, they'll come after me. Fuck you."

There's a good deal more in the article, but here's my 2¢:

Once again, like in Vietnam and Iraq, we're in the middle of a civil war that is going to erupt the minute we leave. The country goat humpers are going to kick the city goat humpers' ass and take over Effedupistan from a corrupt government that we installed and nobody likes anyway.

Of course we don't want the Taliban to take back over, but they're going to. Their treatment of women is abhorrent, but that's a centuries-old Afghan and Muslim cultural deal that no amount of US troops' deaths and our money can change, and it's not worth trying for very much longer than it takes to get out in an orderly manner.

Sorry, Afghanistan, but you're on your own. Settle it amongst yourselves. Oh, and if we get attacked again by al Qaeda operating out of your country, you will find yourself living, or maybe not, in a self-lighting glass-surfaced parking lot. You think Pakistan's got nukes? Don't make me laugh. You wanta see nuclear weenie-wavin', we got nukes we ain't even counted yet.

And what about the main body of al Qaeda? Yeah, there's still a few in Afghanistan, tied in with the hard-core Taliban. Let's just pay the Taliban to kill 'em and then leave the Taliban alone.

Al Qaeda has moved to northern and eastern Africa, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

"They are stuck in Afghanistan because their several hideouts, including various strongholds in South Waziristan, have been captured by the army," a senior Pakistani intelligence official, associated with Afghan affairs, told IslamOnline.net on condition of anonymity.

"They cannot move freely from Afghanistan to Pakistan and vise versa any more," he contended.

Thanks for showin' up at the party, Pakistan, now that al Qaeda's started fuckin' with you and only years after you should have. If you'da been the anvil to our hammer years ago, we'da been outta there by now in the good way instead of off the embassy roof.

The only presence we have in Africa is a little base in Djibouti. Our African 'command', AfriCom, is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany because African nations don't want us on their turf. Can't blame 'em. We have a 'reverse Midas touch' wherever we go: everything we touch turns to shit.

So, we've pretty much run al Qaeda outta town in the 'Stans as much as we can with military power. Shit, we ran 'em outta Afghanistan with a coupla hundred Special Ops guys and the local Northern Alliance, and there's the crux of the biscuit: leave it to the locals. Drop pallets of money to 'em. Fuck, give 'em all Escalades and Harley-Davidsons. Those companies need the boost, and it's cheaper than killing and wounding and traumatizing more of our soldiers and Marines.

Hey! I got an idea: LET'S PAY THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE TO DROP THE TALIBAN ACT AND KILL THE HARD-CORE RIGHT-WING FUNDIES! Hmmmm. By logical extension, let's pay someone to kill ours. Wishful thinking, digressing again...

Al Qaeda is now an international intelligence and law enforcement problem like it should have been all along. John Kerry was right. We maybe coulda done it better in Afghanistan if we'da kept our eyes on the ball, but Iraq was the neocons' focus and now it's too late.

Thanks again Georgie and The Dick.

Please pardon my disjointed ramblings, but that's the way my stream-of-unconsciousness rolls.

Update:

Here's a song somebody should play over and over, maybe just sorta subliminally in the background, while President Obama's dithering ponderin' Afghanistan. There are lessons to be learned:

Thanks to jacklimtp, Singapore.