Don't Worry, Says The White House, The Taliban Is Far From Beaten

Oh, boy.  On Saturday, the Dexter Filkins of the NY Times reviewed a bit of Afghan history and reminded everyone why a brokered peace settlement involving the Taliban could be a real problem:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The drive by President Hamid Karzai to strike a deal with Taliban leaders and their Pakistani backers is causing deep unease in Afghanistan’s minority communities, who fought the Taliban the longest and suffered the most during their rule.

The leaders of the country’s Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities, which make up close to half of Afghanistan’s population, are vowing to resist — and if necessary, fight — any deal that involves bringing members of the Taliban insurgency into a power-sharing arrangement with the government.

...

The dispute is breaking along lines nearly identical to those that formed during the final years of the Afghan civil war, which began after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989 and ended only with the American invasion following the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 100,000 Afghans died, mostly civilians; the Taliban, during their five-year reign in the capital, Kabul, carried out several large-scale massacres of Hazara civilians.

“Karzai is giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban, and he is opening up the old schisms,” said Rehman Oghly, an Uzbek member of Parliament and once a member of an anti-Taliban militia. “If he wants to bring in the Taliban, and they begin to use force, then we will go back to civil war and Afghanistan will be split.”

If the Taliban return, can the Northern Alliance be far behind?  Both Obama and Leon Panetta gave some not-so-reassuring reassurance on this topic:

President Obama and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency both reacted with skepticism on Sunday about the prospects for an Afghanistan peace deal pushed by Pakistan between the Afghan government and some Taliban militants.

While Mr. Obama said a political solution to the conflict was necessary and suggested elements of the Taliban insurgency could be part of negotiations, he said any such effort must be viewed with caution. The C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, was even more forceful in expressing his doubts.

“We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation, where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce Al Qaeda, where they would really try to become part of that society,” Mr. Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Acknowledging that the American-led counterinsurgency effort was facing unexpected difficulty, Mr. Panetta said that the Taliban and their allies had little motive to contemplate a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan.

“We’ve seen no evidence of that and very frankly, my view is that with regards to reconciliation, unless they’re convinced that the United States is going to win and that they’re going to be defeated, I think it’s very difficult to proceed with a reconciliation that’s going to be meaningful,” he said.

The Taliban is far too strong to want to negotiate - great.  And if we succeed in beating them down a bit, will the threatened minorities then be OK with boosting them back up at the negotiating table?

Veering afield a bit, our Presidents has us thinking about verb tenses:

Mr. Obama, speaking later after the Group of 20 meeting in Toronto, noted that as the Afghanistan war approached its 10th anniversary, it was the longest foreign war in American history, and that “ultimately as was true in Iraq, so will be true in Afghanistan, we will have to have a political solution.”

As "was" true in Iraq?  Has Iraq been solved?  I get that even though in Obama's public pronouncements the surge never succeeded in Iraq Obama wants one in Afghanistan, and that Petraeus will now oversee it since he led the secret success in Iraq.  But when was Iraq solved?

Comments

[Danube of Thought]

Strange bump at Raz today. Is the firing and the Petraeus appointment, or noise?

[Soylent Obamacare]

DoT:

Always a bump on Monday or Tuesday for some reason. I don't know why.

[gmax]

Weekend polling is usually more favorable to Democrats. Actually looking somewhat Presidential always helps too, especially when the Journolist talking point of "Brilliant" was going round wall to wall. Give it a few days...

[Jane]

Noise - I hope.

[Ignatz]

--But when was Iraq solved?--

When Bite-Me declared it, in an amazingly adept and audacious implementation of Orwell's memory hole, Barry's great victory.

[matt]

nothing could go wrong from any of this. They will all see their enlightened self interests and come together in the spirit of Islamic kumbaya....

[hit and run]

Well. I'm no statistician,and I ain't particularly adept at math,so please skip to the next comment.

So I took Obama's Rasmussen Approval Index for each day and subtracted from it the average Approval Index of the previous six days. Then I took the average of that number by day of the week for Obama's entire term:

Sunday -0.98
Monday -0.41
Tuesday -0.11
Wednesday 0.15
Thursday 0.21
Friday -0.07
Saturday -0.70

So for example,on Sundays, Obama's Approval Index has averaged going down 1 point compared to the index average of the previous six days,and on Thursdays it has averaged going up 2/10ths of a point.

Using this approach...Five of the worst 10 Mondays for Obama happened in Jan/Feb/Mar of 2009. Today was Obama's 5th best Monday. There have been 27 positive Mondays and 46 negative Mondays.

I'm sure that's way too simple an approach to say all that much,but I found it interesting to consider.

[Danube of Thought]

It is interesting. And it suggests that variations for any particular day of the week are in every case less than a single point compared to other days.

[LouP]

Bah! George Bush deliberately put Afghanistan on the back burner. It was Obama who said we took "our eye off the ball" and that "Afghanistan was the right war." Now, despite his proficiency at making speeches and lying to the public, he cannot and has not even enunciated a reason to fight the war in Afghanistan. A president who can't and won't even do that is a threat to the safety of our military.

Then there is the army of robots that keep his poll numbers up, who can't even figure out that the Taliban is BAD. Not the ACLU'ers, not the feminists, not the anti-religionists, not the gay-rights paraders, etc., etc.

In the meantime the worthless Congress we have cannot figure out that you cannot fight and win a war against insurgents using Geneva Convention rules, and won't do a thing to change that outdated notion.

In my opinion it's time to bring the troops home, and as fast as possible. Maybe someday we'll have a president with more backbone and resolution and integrity to at least try to convince the public, and Congress, why military action is necessary. And maybe someday we'll have a population willing to stand up for some basic principles.

[Pofarmer]

Ah, yes, all is right with the world.

Krugman advocating hyperinflation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html

[gmax]

RAS is a rolling three day average the number on Tuesday has SAT, SUN and MON included.

So Sat being Weds, Thurs and Fri numbers and it is the second lowerst recording.

There is fair amount of noise in sampling as random deviations around the mean.

[Sandy Daze]

28 June 2010
Baghdad
~ the solved (!) campaign ~

The Poseur-In-Chief's (PIC's)* bounce in the Ras is due to his response to the Rolling Stone article. Most folks paying attention were discomfited by the spectacle, even if they supported McCrystal; they knew something was not right.

That the PIC* brought in GENERAL Petraeus to save the day, strikes most as sound judgment. Given that the PIC* is actively trying to destroy our great nation, America, many are stunned that he actually did something that strikes us as lemons into lemonade. It is so contrary to everything else the PIC* does, that he has received the poll bounce. If PIC* wanted to secure defeat, he would have sent Casey, who brought Iraq to within weeks of disaster. The explanation to the poll numbers is simple, really.

By the way, as father of the young woman on the steps of the Lincoln (better-best post) confronting the PIC*-thugs, I could not be more proud.

Take good care,
Sandy

* the PIC is a d--k

[Clarice]

That's right gmax, I forgot.

[larry]

Had to turn Fox off after Lurch had been on a couple minutes. Yeccch. Gawd, I miss Brit Hume. Quote of the day from Di Fi: I look forward to the day when the court can be 50% women and 50% men.

[jimmyk]

I look forward to the day when the court can be 50% women and 50% men.

[Insert un-PC joke about Kagan here.]

[matt]

isn't kagan 50% woman/50% man?

[Joe Bite-Me]

I wish I was still in the Senate committee so I could tell Kagan how much I liked him in Mall Cop

[Barbara]

I look forward to the day when the court can be 50% women and 50% men.

That quote is worthy of the Yogi Berra Award. :-)

[Bravo.]

A family affair this resistance.
==============

[The War of Southern Aggression]

South is Sunni, North is Shia.
================

[Dave (in MA)]

Di Fi: I look forward to the day when the court can be 50% women and 50% men

You gotta be kidding me.