I think Chris Chocola is playing with fire if the AP is accurately reporting his agreement with Senator Bill Frist on how to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The relevant part of the story is this:
Chocola said he agrees with U.S. Sen. Bill Frist the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan “can’t be won with guns and bullets.”
Education and economics will be the key, he said, recalling a group of boys happily running toward U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan when he visited there. The United States has to make sure those boys grow up to see Americans as their friends who built them schools and helped their parents’ businesses, he said.
But Donnelly said the Taliban in Afghanistan shielded Osama bin Laden.
“We have to go after him hard. We need to find him and we need to kill him,” he said.
Here is what Frist said about the Taliban:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday during a visit to Afghanistan that the war can never be won militarily and urged that the Taliban and their allies be brought into the government.
That’s a controversial sentiment for Chocola to endorse. I can certainly buy into the idea of co-opting allies of the Taliban. But asking Mullah Omar and the boys to come play ball with us after they harbored bin-Laden prior to 9/11 is a bit much. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for realpolitik and a practical approach to foreign affairs. But, that soft spot doesn’t extent to the Taliban. We have a debt to settle, and we’re not done yet. Perhaps if we hadn’t diverted all those resources to George W’s Iraqi adventure, we would have progressed in Afghanistan to a point where it was acceptable to let bygones be bygones.
I’ll agree with Doug. As a Democrat and traditional liberal, I also tend to err towards seeking complex diplomatic avenues in handling complex foreign affairs (as had both parties before Bush – the Cold War was party won by our funding of secratarian rebel forces to keep the Communists busy – who we are now fighting).
But extending that to the Taliban. No f-ing way. Im not sure where my line exactly is in this WoT, but I know the Taliban is way over the f-ing line.
Im not sure if Im off-subject or not, but I have lots of personal contacts with France,and have spent lots of time there and in past years I would always get these stories about the smiling american soldiers giving out gum and candy to these wretched little kids as they marched through Normandy. These now adults never forgot that and even when American and French politics get on rocky roads,which is often, there is still a great deep-seated love for Americans by the ‘rank and file’ older French. I know we cannot compare France and Iraq, although some pro-war Bushites have tried to draw parallels between Iraq war and ww2,but we have not won the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and we won’t.That’s already lost,but it’s still a delight to see these older otherwise very cyncial French( all French are cynical) crack a smile when they think of american soldiers marching through France,and I should add, that it’s the same in Germany..the older Germans remember the smiling american soldiers giving out candy and gum in a completely devasted landscape,much of it devasted by allied bombing..Maybe the Iraq war is the first chapter in a new alignment of the GOOD and the BAD peoples of the world.It’s a worthwhile discussion to consider what side is allocated to USA by others,and on 2nd thought, maybe we SHOULD compare the Iraqi war and ww2.
Too late. We have had almost four years to engage in a smart policy of military engagement combined with nation-building. We chose instead to invade Iraq.
In general, I hate the idea of nation-building. I despise the idea of bankrupting our own nation to build another. However, the Taliban had to be taken down because of their complicity with Bin Laden and the September 11th attacks. Given that unique set of circumstances, invasion combined with nation-building was the smart option.
Bush chose not to do so and Afghanistan’s crippling poverty combined with money from Iran has allowed the Taliban to regain strength. Further, we have done nothing to stem the massive trade in illegal drugs that has it’s origin in Afghanistan.
If we had used our money to rebuild Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq, we would be in a far better position than we are today.