According to top officials, President Obama’s latest thinking in the Afghan War is that the US will eventaully have to back off of its emphasis on destroying the Taliban and allow the group to become involved in the political process.
The strategy then would be to officially rule out the Taliban’s “return to power” at least on the central government level while ceding much of the nation to them. In return the groups gaining control over the regions would stop fighting against the central government and the ongoing NATO occupation.
The US would add an unknown number of additional troops and focus on “fighting al-Qaeda,” which would seem kind of silly since James Jones insisted only last weekend that al-Qaeda has at most 100 people inside Afghanistan.
What’s curious is that this strategy of focusing on al-Qaeda while trimming back expectations that it will ever be able to defeat the Taliban is essentially the “Biden Option,” which President Obama publicly ruled out just yesterday. It seems that the president is having a hard time making up his mind on exactly which escalation to go with, and is just bouncing back and forth between them.
Related Stories
* October 7, 2009 -- Report: Obama Rules Out ‘Biden Option’ on Afghanistan
* October 6, 2009 -- Vast Majority of Americans Doubt Afghan War Will Ever End
* October 6, 2009 -- Republicans Back Obama’s Afghan Escalation
Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/08/obama-open-to-taliban-involvement-in-afghan-politics/
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