Feb 09 2010
Negotiate This
Why the international community is in a fight to the finish in Afghanistan:
By all means, try to reason with the Taliban. But you’ll want to know, going in, that its jihad is a revolt against the very idea of reason. The only reason the Taliban makes a promise is to break it. It’s why no one has yet devised a negotiating stratagem more elegantly effective than “put the gun down or we will kill you.”
You can’t sit down and talk with them. You can’t win them over with moral arguments about Afghans ought to be able to exercise universal human rights. You can’t even bribe them.
In the headlong rush to surrender by some diplomats and deluded “peace” groups, what’s missing is recognition that such a surrender will not be accepted. They will kill everyone who gets in their way — meaning the typical Afghan villager that wants nothing to do with the Taliban’s nihilistic interpretation of Islam, or the troops and aid workers from around the world who just want to help Afghanistan develop into something like a normal country.
No more games. No “Let’s make a deal.” In Afghanistan, slow and steady wins the race: Clear, hold, build.
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