The moral depravity of the Obama administration continues apace.
Obama opens door to more moderate Taliban
President Obama is holding out hope that U.S. forces in Afghanistan can peel away elements of the Taliban and possibly move them toward reconciliation…
Obama cautioned that Afghanistan is a less-governed region with a history of fierce independence among tribes, creating a tough set of circumstances for the United States to deal with.
The idea of cooperation with some in the Taliban has been talked about for many months by American military commanders, including Gen. David Patraeus, head of U.S. Central Command.
“If you talk to Gen. Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us,” said Obama.
Appeasement, pathetic and cowardly.
I would have thought differently before reading Lone Survivor. Ask Marcus Lytrell if the Pashtun can stand up to the Taliban and Al queda, fight fierce and stand beside an American. Fallujah (correct?) was won by gaining the confidence of those who once fought us. They came to know that on our side,came liberty and self governance, peace for their towns, not reign by terror. Find Marcus.
Far be it from me to speak for Gen. Petraeus, but the question of peeling fighters who will reconcile off of the Taliban is more complex than Obama seems to appreciate. If he’s not going to convey those intricacies, he should simply not comment on it. Otherwise, he dangerously leaves the impression that the U.S. is indeed willing to appease terrorists. That’s not true, and I don’t think that’s what Petraeus is suggesting.
It wasn’t just fundamentalists who were “willing to work with us.” They were “convinced” to work with us by lethal, hardcore means delivered by U.S. Marines, while at the same time conveying to the Sunnis, “We’d rather work with you than kill you.” Some tribal elements in Anbar, although part of the Sunni insurgency, were in fact sane people. You could make a deal with them.
We gave the Sunni tribes a choice: live under Al Queda’s iron sandal, have your daughters married off and your head lopped off if you disagree, or be friends with the strongest tribe in Anbar, the United States Marines. One by one, they came over.
From what anthropologists and recent returnees have said, Afghan tribes have unrelenting, strict customs and won’t yield to foreigners, whether Al Queda or U.S. Offering your hand while demonstrating your willing destructiveness is tricky business, but our people are pretty good at it now. Legend has it that Gen. Mattis’ approach to the Sunni sheiks of Anbar was thus: “I come in friendship, with tears in my eyes, but if you f*ck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
No better friend, no worse enemy.
Damn, first it was a shortage of ammunition and now it looks like a coming shortage of heroin. There’s no winning with this guy.
US President Barack Obama has said the US is not winning in Afghanistan, saying it is more complex than Iraq.
Boo hoo, Baby Barry has to actually do something and it’s too hard.
At first glance, this manuever was appalling to me. Then I remembered an old Chinese saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. President Obama and absolutely no one who is a Obaosi liberal could have possibly have thought this up.
General Petraeus has probably been using this manuever clandestinely and whether or not the obvious half-minded Obaosi’s knew it, it may have become time to debut this premise. This manuever requires a sincere and serious show of force, and some time to be effective. I’d say this has been planned and gradually introduced for perhaps more than a year.
Afghanistan, not unlike Vietnam is a country that has nothing to lose. And yet may be presiding over some seriously lucrative ‘illicit’ crops tha could rival anything else we have seen in Central and South America Therefor it is more dangerous than any of us can imagine. And also, we must actually remain to prevent an unusually bad circumstance of an actual illicit drug war. This may seem like I must be out of my mind. Perhaps so. Then again, the same way we provided the Afghan Army with weapons against the Soviets who failed miserably, we must consider just what allies the Afghans have against us? I would say just about every nation with radical Islamics has a hand in defending Afghanistan. Perhaps we should simply obliterate it. If all we offer them is flowers, they will light it up and smoke it after they shoot us.
I say we deal with them just as the islamic fundamentalist deal with us, obliterate them.
I could see the rationale in reaching out to members of militia in Iraq that were willing to lay down their arms and join in the process of building an Iraqi government. There was something to build, and the idea was the rebels could get something out of cooperating that would more likely create a peaceful country than just going after all of them. The hope was it would be a win-win. What’s the end goal that our government is trying to achieve via. bringing in moderate Taliban? I haven’t heard what that is yet.
Obama is the consummate idiot. Taliban factions are going to line up in droves to prove to the US that they “moderates” willing to “work with us”. Then the dollars will start to roll. And they will be financed, by the very enemy they seek to destroy, so they can destroy us. Lovely.
Afghanistan: Graveyard of empires. Is anyone really surprised or did we forget what we’ve been talking about for the past year? Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.
I say, succeed in Iraq and to hell with Afghanistan. There are some places in the world best left alone. Leave it up to SOCOM to deal with the terrorist elements and pull the conventional forces out.
The Barky translation is: “I know I can’t push Socialism or something the free world describs as Democracy onto the Taliban, so why don’t we try a Crack Smoking solution and sit down and smoke a peace pipe actually full of crack, or opium? uh, uh, uh, you know, uh?” Unbelievable.
YES, MY WEEKEND IS MADE!!! Everyone should check out the latest Rasmussen Presidential tracking poll from yesterday (Saturday) and one out today (Sunday). I guess it takes a few days for these polls to hit real time, but Obama just sank 7 points in Rasmussen’s approval index. The index is the difference between those who “Strongly Disapprove” & those who “Strongly Approve” of Obama. The last 3 days has seen a major negative shift for Obama. It’s looking bad, real bad for Obama. Hooray! This keeps up, the Index will intersect and I think the American people will be calling for his resignation. I really didn’t know how bad he has made this economy until I actually ran into people who now openly talk about their finances i.e. Retirement in 401Ks and how much they have lost. Most have lost 50%+. Many, although the minority, voted for Obama and are sincerely VERY upset right now. Maybe we Conservative should start using the phrase of Dead Fish Emmanuel “you never want a crisis to go to waste”.
Of course bari hopes things will get better with the islamoterrorists. Hope is wanting things to change but not doing anything to help make the change. Bari is still holding up an empty suit and being present. He needs to start to work and change instead of hope – do something for a change instead of fly aroung in his private big jet doing campaign stops – now that would really be change.
If we continue to fight wars by getting permisison to fire on the enemy, we should just surrender, cut our losses and get out instead of making targets out of our service personnel.
People are beginning to get over the historical moment and they want their purchased leader to start leading.
A more moderate Taliban? Oh My God. I can’t even imagine what that means in any way at all. Even if I grab the bottle of BV under my counter and drink half, I couldn’t make any sense of that.
Words fail me. It is as if we elected the faculty of Columbia University’s Political Science department to run our foreign policy.
Moderate Taliban, are are they the ones that only chop off the top part of your head?
Afghanistan may just be too damn much work for Baraq. After the surge proved stategically valuable in Iraq, he never cited it and made Afghanistan his pet campaign. Now he wants to negotiate with moderate Talibans – The Talibani by the very suggestion of orthodoxy in their name, are not likely to be moderate. I suppose he’s going to use the Paki’s to broker the deal.
So now he has “his preferred” war and he wants to do a Jubilation T. Cornpone:
“When it seemed like our brave boys would keep on fighting for months,
Who took pity on them and ca-pit-u-lated at once?”
Why it was Jubilation T. Cornpone; Unshaven and shorn – pone.
Jubilation T. Cornpone, he weren’t nobody’s dunce!
Then again: First interview: Al Arabiya
First Foreign Visit: Turkey (A country with the fever of jihadist influence growing.)
While barely disguising his contempt for our dearest ally the United Kingdom on its PM’s visit, and returning a bust of Churchill – he initiates a ‘sub rosa’ correspondence with Russia, discounting the friendships that prevail in Ukraine, Georgia, Poland…
With a major summit of world leaders at Davos, was the United States represented? No.
Ironically, Turkey, first on his post-election “World Tour”, had a little ‘dust-up’ at the event.
Hey, Would you buy a used helicopter from this guy?
Doesn’t B.O. remember that the Taliban used to control the WHOLE country, except the small portion held by the Northern Alliance? We kicked them out by backing tribal leaders from that alliance, like we beat Al Qaeda in Iraq by getting local tribal leaders to side with us. The Taliban have survived by staying off the battlefield and running across the border to Pakistan. Now they want to come out and fight, so we need a surge to deal them a death blow in conjunction with shoring up ties with local leaders.