Taliban not the Enemy: Biden - Taliban Confirm Office in Qatar

[fd24]

There was less than a month between the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war - no sane individual can characterize the US decision to go to war in that time-frame as anything but 'knee jerk, hasty, poorly thought out ..'.

There was no time or thought whatsoever given to exploring diplomatic engagement (with the threat of war) and exploring the Taliban offer for an OBL trial in a third country or/and by an impartial judicial panel.

The US has no justification for its decision to war, in the absence of any sincere attempt to resolve the situation diplomatically - the decision to go to war shows the US military, political and media leadership for what the are and have been for decades - a bunch of arrogant, war-mongering, trigger-happy red-necks (and I use the slur as being applicable to all racial/ethnic groups, since I use it as being descriptive of a particular mindset in the US leadership).

---------- Post added at 05:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:18 PM ----------


Where do you see a bible being knelt upon?

If you stop popping beer cans in your backyard, you might be able to come up with better analogies.

If they wanted to show the world their rage and anger they should have entered Afghanistan for 2 to 3 months and shown their rage and annoyance and done their business. They would have had the backing from most countries for their actions. To still be their has left the USA reeling, debt ridden, used all their favors up and now have got less friends than Idi Amin. Tremendous misjudgement - leaving them financially screwed.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Gambet most of the time you are off topic on numerous threads and seem to have a chip on your shoulder. I have yet see you come out with anything useful. On the other hand Chogy I have all the time in the world for and as a result have learned from him have tempered my view on americans so much that when I talk negativly about americans I make sure I say american govt and not american people. I lightheartedly put that post up to liven and add satire the guy was not disrespecting the american flag he was praying to god on it. You on the other hand took it to religion and tried to make capital and be offensive, Back to topic american govt is changing tune because they are unable to defeat the taleban

In his 'knee-jerk' response, gambit did not quite get the humor of that image - given that prayer-rugs are treated respectfully, the use of the American flag as a prayer-rug suggests respect - rather the opposite of burning it ...

---------- Post added at 05:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

If they wanted to show the world their rage and anger they should have entered Afghanistan for 2 to 3 months and shown their rage and annoyance and done their business. They would have had the backing from most countries for their actions. To still be their has left the USA reeling, debt ridden, used all their favors up and now have got less friends than Idi Amin. Tremendous misjudgement - leaving them financially screwed.

With the threat of war and destruction of the Taliban, heck the PA and ISI would have been willing to launch joint special ops with NATO to hunt down OBL and company to ward off war, if the Taliban remained uncooperative.

 

[lem34]

All Pakistan have to do is take control of her territory. For now, despite what Biden said, the Taliban is our enemy. As long as there are elements inside and outside the Pakistani government that sympathizes and aid both groups inside Pakistani territory, this kind of back-and-forth accusations will persists.

And all the american people have to do is take their govt back from the AIPAC sponsered govt. that goes into wars too easily, responds to attacks in a disproportionate and inhumane way that creates more terrorists than it destroys. After 10 years of trying to defeat the taleban your govt now and in the last 12 months has been making overtures to people they have been trying to eleminate. Why doesnt your govt try to win hearts and minds, in this respect your govt could learn from china, anyway back to thread I assert that these overtures are being made after having american soldiers killed spending billions that american govt now has an unsustainable debt and has to sue for peace and has been forced into a situation that it publically claims taleban is no enemy. Go ask the taleban what they think???

 

[pakdefender]

Once upon a time in DC .....

President Ronald Reagan Meeting Some Mujahideen - YouTube

 

[fd24]

Gambit - In policing the world and still thinking you guys are "policing the world" do you not realize that the world is beginning to detest the ways of the USA? Its time to change. Its time to move forward and stop the systamatic bullying of the world. Afghanistan is chicken feed. The taliban are men in pyjamas eating bananas - yet they are still giving your men a bloody nose.
The next time you attempt to bite off more than you can chew your nation may not be walking. The next target will be bigger and harder than the banana men in pyjamas.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Gambit:

This exchange between Tapper and Carney would indicate that the White House is sticking to the Biden narrative and supporting it. It does involve walking a 'tight-rope' when it comes to domestic opinion, and can backfire horribly with a major Taliban attack on US forces in Afghanistan, which is why I suggested that this time around the reports of 'progress in peace talks with the Taliban' might actually have a degree of truth to them - why else would the WH take such a risk?

Carney did not only endorse Biden's comments, he also went further and argued that the 'reconciliation process' was based on the reality that the 'Taliban were not the US's enemy'. Biden might have spoken too soon, but I don't think he spoke inaccurately (with respect to the White House thinking on this matter).

Carney: “I think it is important — I know you’ve written about this — to understand what most Americans I think know, which is that we didn’t invade Afghanistan, we did not send U.S. military personnel into Afghanistan because the Taliban were in power. They had been in power. We sent — we went into Afghanistan because al-Qaeda had launched an attack against the United States from Afghanistan.

“And what the vice president was reflecting is that, and this is related to the reconciliation process that I was just discussing, is that the Taliban per se, while we are fighting them, it is not the elimination, the elimination of the Taliban is not the issue here. The objective that the president laid out when he laid out his Afghanistan strategy made clear that the number one principle here is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately to defeat al-Qaeda, as well as help stabilize Afghanistan. And that’s what we’re doing.

“Part of that process is our support for the Afghan-led reconciliation talks. The conditions for reconciliation for the Taliban are very clear. But reconciliation has to be a part of the long-term process in Afghanistan if Afghanistan is going to evolve into a peaceful country.”

Tapper: “I understand that. Obviously, there isn’t much of an al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. Leon Panetta, when he was CIA director, told me a year or two ago that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. We’ve been devoting a great deal of blood and treasure, focused almost entirely on defeating Taliban insurgents, Taliban fighters. I understand that ultimately that there is going to have to be some sort of reconciliation. I just wonder if the language was regrettable at all?”

Carney: “It’s only regrettable when taken out of context that I just explained. It’s regrettable to present it out of context because it is a simple fact that we went into Afghanistan because of the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001. We are there now to ultimately defeat al-Qaeda, to stabilize Afghanistan and stabilize it in part so that al-Qaeda or other terrorists who have as their aim attacks on the United States cannot establish a foothold again in that country. So what is also completely clear is that Afghanistan’s future has to include within it reconciliation, and that is why we support the Afghan government-led effort there.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jake-tap...oe-biden-taliban-comments-was-it-regrettable/

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

the Americans and their long-term strategy are best served by employing soft power, rather than mere military might --which we have seen in Afghan case-study as something that begets more instability and furthers all stake-holders away from the whole ''winning hearts and minds'' thing.

Afghanistan is proof that without the support of ALL people on the ground, without their cooperation --- COIN is meaningless.

 

[Shoaib Mirza]

In simple words US has lost war in Afghanistan on ground realities.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Gambit:

This exchange between Tapper and Carney would indicate that the White House is sticking to the Biden narrative and supporting it. It does involve walking a 'tight-rope' when it comes to domestic opinion, and can backfire horribly with a major Taliban attack on US forces in Afghanistan, which is why I suggested that this time around the reports of 'progress in peace talks with the Taliban' might actually have a degree of truth to them - why else would the WH take such a risk?


Jake Tapper Grills Jay Carney Over Joe Biden Taliban Comments: Was It Regrettable? | Mediaite

It will be interesting to see DoD/Pentagon's response, if any.

 

[BATMAN]

I still don't believe that Taliban officials and their rag tag security forces survived the carpet bombing of 500lb bombs.

We are engaged in a debate for nothing.... interview some military expert to understand what happens when 500lb bombs explode end to end.

Next, please go and interview some one who had visited the WOT bombed site aftermath. Take the example of Baghdad airport, one bomb and every living being in perimeter of few kilometers burned like coal.

The technology today is deadly and intelligent.... there will be no survivors in future wars.

 

[pakdefender]

The War in Afghanistan is now all about hubris and ego of the US military ( along with interests of the military-industrial complex ) and there could be political assassinations in the USA if the civilian setup in america diverges away from the world view of the American military ( as happened in the case of John F Kennedy )

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Secret US, Taliban Talks Reach Turning Point

After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior US officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.

As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.

It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: US troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.

Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.

US officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, the officials said.

The stakes in the diplomatic effort could not be higher. Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after Nato troops finish turning security over to Karzai’s weak government by the end of 2014.

Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban — some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks — could be reconciled.

The effort is now at a pivotal point.

“We imagine that we’re on the edge of passing into the next phase. Which is actually deciding that we’ve got a viable channel and being in a position to deliver” on mutual confidence-building measures, said a senior US official.

While some US-Taliban contacts have been previously reported, the extent of the underlying diplomacy and the possible prisoner transfer have not been made public until now.

The reconciliation effort, which has already faced setbacks including a supposed Taliban envoy who turned out to be an imposter, faces hurdles on multiple fronts, the US officials acknowledged.

They include splits within the Taliban; suspicion from Karzai and his advisers; and Pakistan’s insistence on playing a major, even dominating, role in Afghanistan’s future.

Obama will likely face criticism, including from Republican presidential candidates, for dealing with an insurgent group that has killed US soldiers and advocates a strict Islamic form of government.

But US officials say that the Afghan war, like others before it, will ultimately end in a negotiated settlement.

“The challenges are enormous,” a second senior US official acknowledged. “But if you’re where we are…you can’t not try. You have to find out what’s out there.”

Next steps?

If the effort advances, one of the next steps would be more public, unequivocal US support for establishing a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.

US officials said they have told the Taliban they must not use that office for fundraising, propaganda or constructing a shadow government, but only to facilitate future negotiations that could eventually set the stage for the Taliban to re-enter Afghan governance.

On Sunday, a senior member of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council said the Taliban had indicated it was willing to open an office in an Islamic country.

But underscoring the fragile nature of the multi-sided diplomacy, Karzai on Wednesday announced he was recalling Afghanistan’s ambassador to Qatar, after reports that nation was readying the opening of the Taliban office. Afghan officials complained they were left out of the loop.

On a possible transfer of Taliban prisoners long held at Guantanamo, US officials stressed the move would be a ‘national decision’ made in consultation with the US Congress. Obama is expected to soon sign into law the 2011 defence authorisation bill that contains new provisions on detainee policy.

There are slightly fewer that 20 Afghan citizens at Guantanamo, according to various accountings. It is not known which ones might be transferred, nor what assurances the White House has that the Karzai government would keep them in its custody.

Guantanamo detainees have been released to foreign governments — and sometimes set free by them — before. But the transfer as part of a diplomatic negotiation appears unprecedented.

Ten years after the Taliban government was toppled by its Afghan opponents and their Western backers, a hoped-for political settlement has become a centrepiece of the US strategy to end a war that has killed nearly 3,000 foreign troops and cost the Pentagon alone $330 billion.

While Obama’s decision to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in 2009-10 helped push the Taliban out of much of its southern heartland, the war is far from over. Militants are said to remain able to slip in and out of parts of Pakistan, where the Taliban’s senior leadership is allegedly located.

Bold attacks from the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network have undermined the narrative of improving security and raised questions about how well an inexperienced Afghan military will be able to cope when foreign troops go home.

In that uncertain context, officials say that initial contacts with insurgent representatives since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly embraced a diplomatic strategy in a February 18, 2011 speech have centred on establishing whether the Taliban was open to reconciliation, despite its pledge to continue its ‘sacred jihad’ against Nato and US soldiers.

“The question has been to the Taliban, ‘You have got a choice to make. Life’s moving on,” the second US official said. “There’s a substantial military campaign out there that will continue to do you substantial damage…are you prepared to go forward with some kind of reconciliation process?”

US officials have met with Tayeb Agha, who was a secretary to Mullah Omar, and they have held one meeting arranged by Pakistan with Ibrahim Haqqani, a brother of the Haqqani network’s founder. They have not shut the door to further meetings with the Haqqani group, which is blamed for a brazen attack this fall on the US embassy in Kabul and which senior US officials link closely to Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

US officials say they have kept Karzai informed of the process and have met with him before and after each encounter, but they declined to confirm whether representatives of his government are present at those meetings.

Evolving Taliban position?

Officials now see themselves on the verge of reaching a second phase in the reconciliation process that, if successful, would clinch the confidence-building measures and allow them to move to a third stage in which the Afghan government and the Taliban would sit down together in talks facilitated by the United States.

“That’s why it’s especially delicate — because if we don’t deliver the second phase, we don’t get to the pay-dirt,” the first senior US official said.

Senior administration officials say that confidence-building measures must be implemented, not merely agreed to, before full-fledged political talks can begin. The sequence of such measures has not been determined, and they will ultimately be announced by Afghans, they say.

Underlying the intensive efforts of US negotiators are fundamental questions about whether — and why — the Taliban would want to strike a peace deal with the Western-backed Karzai government.

US officials stress that the ‘end conditions’ they want the Taliban to embrace — renouncing violence, breaking with al Qaeda, and respecting the Afghan constitution — are not preconditions to starting talks.

Encouraging trends on the Afghan battlefield — declining militant attacks, a thinning of the Taliban’s mid-level leadership, the emergence of insurgent-on-insurgent violence — is one reason why US officials believe the Taliban may be more likely to engage in substantive talks than in the past.

They also cite what they see as an overlooked, subtle shift in the Taliban’s position on reconciliation over the past year, based in part by statements from Mullah Omar marking Muslim holidays this year.

In July, the Taliban reiterated its long-standing position of rejecting any peace talks as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. In October, a senior Haqqani commander said the United States was insincere about peace in Afghanistan.

But US officials say the Taliban no longer want to be the global pariah it was in the 1990s. Some elements have suggested flexibility on issues of priority for the West, such as protecting rights for women and girls.

“That’s one of the reasons why we think this is serious,” a third senior US official said.

Risky strategy

Yet as the process moves ahead, the idea of seeking a peace deal with an extremist movement is fraught with challenge.

At least one purported insurgent representative has turned out to be a fraud, highlighting the difficulty of vetting potential brokers in the shadowy world of the militants.

And the initiative was dealt a major blow in September when former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed peace efforts for Karzai, was assassinated in an attack Afghanistan said originated in neighbouring Pakistan.

Since then, Karzai has been more ambivalent about talks. He ruled out an early resumption in negotiations and said Afghanistan would talk only to Pakistan ‘until we have an address for the Taliban.’

The dust-up over the unofficial Taliban office in Qatar, with a spokesman for Karzai stressing that Afghanistan must lead peace negotiations to end the war, suggests tensions in the US and Afghan approaches to the peace process.

Speaking in an interview with CNN aired on Sunday, Karzai counselled caution in making sure that Taliban interlocutors are authentic — and authentically seeking peace. The Rabbani killing, he said, was a demonstration of such difficulties and “brought us in a shock to the recognition that we were actually talking to nobody.”

Critics of Obama’s peace initiative are deeply skeptical of the Taliban’s willingness to negotiate given that the West’s intent to pull out most troops after 2014 would give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or nudge the weak Kabul government toward collapse.

While the United States is expected to keep a modest military presence in Afghanistan beyond then, all of Obama’s ‘surge’ troops will be home by next fall and the administration — looking to refocus on domestic priorities — is already exploring further reductions.

Another reason to be circumspect is the potential spoiler role of Pakistan, which has so far resisted US pressure to crack down on militants fuelling violence in Afghanistan and to cooperate more closely with the US military and diplomatic campaign there.

Such considerations make reconciliation a divisive initiative even within the Obama administration. Few officials describe themselves as optimists about the peace initiative; at the State Department, which is formally leading the talks, senior officials see the odds of brokering a successful agreement at only around 30 per cent.

“There’s a very real likelihood that these guys aren’t serious…which is why are continuing to prosecute all of the lines of effort here,” the third senior US official said.

While Nato commanders promise they will keep up pressure on militants as the troop force shrinks, they are facing a tenacious insurgency in eastern Afghanistan that may prove even more challenging than the south.

Still, with Obama committed to withdrawing from Afghanistan, as the United States did last week from Iraq, the administration has few alternatives but to pursue what may well prove to be a quixotic quest for a deal.

“Wars end, and the ends of wars have political consequences,” the second official said. “You can either try to shape those, or someone does it to you.”

Secret US, Taliban talks reach turning point | World | DAWN.COM

 

[gambit]

There was less than a month between the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war - no sane individual can characterize the US decision to go to war in that time-frame as anything but 'knee jerk, hasty, poorly thought out ..'.

Just because your military cannot move as quickly as ours can, that does not equal to a knee-jerk response. In fact, from the start of the Afghan war, it was mostly Special Operations and USAF, not the 'regular' forces.

There was no time or thought whatsoever given to exploring diplomatic engagement (with the threat of war) and exploring the Taliban offer for an OBL trial in a third country or/and by an impartial judicial panel.

The US has no justification for its decision to go to war given the absence of any sincere attempt to resolve the situation diplomatically - the decision to go to war shows the US military, political and media leadership for what they are and have been for decades -

We have gone through this before. Over a decade of attempts at negotiations with the Taliban, either directly or through acceptable third party, is more than qualify.

a bunch of arrogant, war-mongering, trigger-happy red-necks (and I use the slur as being applicable to all racial/ethnic groups in the US leadership, since I use it as being descriptive of a particular mindset in the US leadership).

Of course you would. It is well documented that only 'red-necks' are trigger happy people. Unlike those who are so restrained as we see in the ME today.

 

[Zarvan]

Which Taliban are you talking about.

Afghan Taliban are an ideological group of people working for the freedom and prosperity of their country.

Do not confuse Pakistani Taliban with Afghan Taliban.

Tehreek e Taliban of Pakistan (TTP) is a group of Smugglers and Thugs that dont stand for anything.

The Waziristan people's only occupation has been Drug running, Smuggling and Kidnapping for ransom.

These people ( TTP) are a band of Criminals and they should be uprooted once and for all.

TTP is Anti Pakistan and Anti Islam. We will decimate this band of Criminals.

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You are an Indian TROLL who is incapable of contributing even an iota of benefit to PDF.

I am talking about TTP Sir because according to your own Army Chief their is not military Solution and also he admitted they haven't defeated the Taliban in fact its just like Tom and Jerry going on they chase them in one area they run away to another one and when they go for them in that area they hide in third one and the moment Army will pull back Taliban will return so your own Army is not trying it self and also asking government to start talks with TTP other wise India and Israel will take advantage of situation in Pakistan

 

[gambit]

You do have a point there...but if the US got Saudi's to disown AlQaeda and it's ideology, it wasn't done over night, in fact it took them a few years to eradicate the menance and sympathizers. Now that AlQaida has spread out to Africa and whatnot and OBL gone, are you still of the view that Afghan war earned US more friends than enemies?

Look at it this way: In foreign affairs, if it MUST come down to a choice of being respected or feared, EVERYONE would chose to be feared. Pakistan can cry foul over the American raid in Abbottabad, but if you want to look at it in terms of insult, it pales in comparison to 9/11 or what happened to India in Mumbai in 2008. If anything to the scale of 9/11 happened to Pakistan and if Pakistan can respond the same way we did, would that response be so categorically so different from US? If anything, both our friends and enemies expected US to respond the way we did. To expect is not the same thing as to want. If we had done nothing, would that be any guarantee that al-Qaeda would remain in Afghanistan? Who here is really that intellectually a 12yr old? Santa Clause and the Great Pumpkin exists.