The 'political solution' fantasy in Afghanistan

NY Times:

HERE is a proposition that is bound to cut deep into the national psyche: Should the United States seek to negotiate with some of the same people who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden prior to the Sept. 11 attacks?

President Obama is sending an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan, as part of his effort to try to put a tourniquet on the hemorrhaging war effort there. He has ordered a strategic review of United States policy there, and tasked a diplomatic behemoth — Richard C. Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton accords — to try to do in Afghanistan what he did in Bosnia. And he has, within days of assuming the presidency, taken ownership of the war in Afghanistan, with all of the Vietnam-era references to quagmire that come with it.

But a central point is hovering above all the strategic reviewing of “Afpak” (Afghanistan-Pakistan) that is going on in Washington, Islamabad, Kabul, London, Paris and Brussels. Any conflict that has ever been solved involved the various sides coming to agreement, and Afghanistan, the theory goes, is no different.

“I think it is clear that you have to have a political solution to Afghanistan, and I wouldn’t rule anything off the table, including conversations with some aspects of the Taliban,” said Reuben Brigety, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for American Progress.

It is a point that European — particularly British — officials have pressed on the Americans for some time. With the Bush administration, one European diplomat said, “there was a complete ideological block to the notion of coming to any kind of deals with anything that could be called the Taliban. But now,” the diplomat added, speaking on condition of anonymity, “we’re in a different ballpark.”

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This is nonsense on stilts. For much of the last two years Karzai has been trying to shape a political solution with the Taliban Islamic religious bigots through the assistance of the Saudis. The problems with religious bigots is they are not prone to compromise. It was not the Bush administration that was the problem, it remains the Taliban. They will look at the Obama initiative as a sign of weakness rather than an opportunity. Unlike the Iraqi Sunnies, they have not rejected the wierd religious beliefs of al Qaeda or their mass murder for Allah tactics.

There is also a flawed premise that a political solution is the only way to stop the conflict. What was the political solution that stopped World War II? More recently, what was the political solution with al Qaeda in Iraq? Defeat of the enemy is a much more effective way to end a conflict and defeat of the religious bigots responsible for 9-11 is worth the effort. We should not let liberals blow it the way they did in Vietnam.

Don Surber has an interesting take:

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Question: Having pissed off the Britons, the Swiss, the Tibetans, the Poles and the Israelis, who is President Obama trying to befriend?

Answer: The Taliban.

Clueless.

Utterly and contemptibly clueless.

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That is Democrat "smart" diplomacy at work.