Question: Could it be true that the Obama Administration has been contemplating on negotiating with the Taliban and, if so, why?
The following articles and/or blog posts and videos reveal the disturbing answer to this question-You Decide:
I. Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of Taliban!-Posted on The New York Times-By HELENE COOPER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG-On March 7, 2009:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08obama.html?_r=1&ref=politics
These are pertinent excerpts from this article and/or blog post:
“WASHINGTON — President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.
Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.
In a 35-minute conversation with The New York Times aboard Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Obama reviewed the challenges to his young administration. The president said he could not assure Americans the economy would begin growing again this year. But he pledged that he would “get all the pillars in place for recovery this year” and urged Americans not to “stuff money in their mattresses.”
“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future,” he said. “I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”
As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Mr. Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism. After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles” and to point out that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs began under President George W. Bush.
Sitting at the head of a conference table with his suit coat off, Mr. Obama exhibited confidence six weeks into his presidency despite the economic turmoil around the globe and the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He struck a reassuring tone about the economy, saying he had no trouble sleeping at night.
“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”
The president spoke at length about the struggle with terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, staking out positions that at times seemed more comparable to those of his predecessor than many of Mr. Obama’s more liberal supporters would like. He did not rule out the option of snatching terrorism suspects out of hostile countries.
Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”
Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban “should be explored,” an idea also considered by some military leaders. But now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.
“If you talk to General 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 because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said.
At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same success. “The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,” he said. “You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.”
For American military planners, reaching out to some members of the Taliban is fraught with complexities. For one thing, officials would have to figure out which Taliban members might be within the reach of a reconciliation campaign, no easy task in a lawless country with feuding groups of insurgents.
And administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway. Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.
During the interview, Mr. Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasize ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known Al Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said.
“I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario,” he added. The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”
Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.
Instead, aides said Mr. Obama’s comment referred only to a Supreme Court decision last year finding that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.
Mr. Obama signaled that those on the left seeking a wholesale reversal of Mr. Bush’s detainee policy might be disappointed. Mr. Obama said that by the time he got into office, the Bush administration had taken “steps to correct certain policies and procedures after those first couple of years” after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He credited not Mr. Bush but the former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael V. Hayden and the former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell, who “really had America’s security interests in mind when they acted, and I think were mindful of American values and ideals.”
Turning to domestic affairs, Mr. Obama indicated that the end was not in sight when it came to the economic crisis and suggested that he expected it could take another $750 billion to address the problem of weak and failing financial institutions beyond the $700 billion already approved. Maintaining support for the additional costs of bailouts is quite likely to be among Mr. Obama’s biggest challenges, given the anger that many Americans feel toward Wall Street executives who they believe are being unduly rewarded with bailout money.
The budget plan he released last month included a placeholder estimate of $250 billion for additional bank bailouts — an amount that represents the projected long-term cost to taxpayers of a $750 billion infusion into the financial sector — and in the interview Mr. Obama indicated that those figures were what he was likely to seek from Congress.
“We have no reason to revise that estimate,” he said.
Addressing the fear and uncertainty among Americans as job losses mount and stock markets sink, Mr. Obama urged Americans to “be prudent” in their personal financial decisions, but not to hunker down so much that it would further slow the recovery.
“What I don’t think people should do is suddenly stuff money in their mattresses and pull back completely from spending,” he said.
Still, he avoided guessing when the situation might begin to turn around. “Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year,” he said. “How long it will take before recovery actually translates into stronger job markets and so forth is going to depend on a whole range of factors.”
He added that “part of what you’re seeing now is weaknesses in Europe that are actually greater than some weaknesses here, bouncing back and having an impact on our markets.”
Mr. Obama’s uncertain forecast about when the economy will begin to rebound contrasted with the projections embedded in the budget he recently released.
That plan rested on the assumption that the economy would shrink by 1.2 percent this year, a projection that many economists, including some in his administration, consider overly optimistic because it implies the economy would bounce back in the second half of this year.
As he settles into his new job, Mr. Obama said he spent much of his time reading briefing books, but still tried to stay in touch by perusing newspapers and thumbing through weekly newsmagazines. But he said he did not watch much television, except basketball games.
Mr. Obama rode to the White House partly on his savvy use of new technology, and he has a staff-written blog on his presidential Web site. Even so, he said he did not find blogs to be reliable, citing the economy as one example.
“Part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs,” he said, “is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully, then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another — well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine.”
II. U.S. Negotiating with the Taliban?–Posted On CBSNews.Com-By Michelle Levi-On January 28, 2010:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/28/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6151696.shtml
These are pertinent excerpts from this article:
“Patrick Cronin, a senior advisor at the Center for New American Security, said on “Washington Unplugged” Thursday that United States officials first toyed with the idea of negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan early on in the Obama administration, though they did not act.
He said that early debate over possible negotiations – as part of an effort to combat al Qaeda – came during a “point of weakness” for the United States. Things have changed since then, he argued.
“Now that we have committed to a new Afghan policy, if not strategy,” Cronin said, “…we are in a relatively strong position to at least talk about the tactic of reaching out to at least some members of the Taliban.” Cronin said the administration can now differentiate between rank and file and Taliban leadership.
CBS News National Security consultant Juan Zarate said it is difficult to look envision a successful U.S. exit strategy in Afghanistan without some involvement by members of the Taliban.
“One thing for the American public to keep in mind is that the Taliban is not one homogenous group,” Zarate said. “I think this discussion comes at a time when we are trying to find out with the long term solution in Afghanistan is.”
Zarate explained that the counterinsurgency strategy set forward in Afghanistan by Generals Petraeus and McChrystal “relies on finding local allies which may be peeling off Taliban members.”
“That is why you are seeing more discussion of dealing with the Taliban,” he added.
Moderator Sharyl Attkisson asked Cronin and Zarate about the American public’s perception of the Taliban as the enemy of the United States.
“Not everyone in the Taliban has been working with al Qaeda,” Cronin argued. Watch the full interview above.
“Washington Unplugged” appears live on CBSNews.com each weekday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Click here to check out previous episodes.”
Note: This study report reveals that “engaging in strategic negotiations with the Taliban or even talking about them in the current security situation is seriously detrimental to the U.S. strategic objectives of increasing security in Afghanistan, preventing terrorist safehavens there, and building the Afghan state, along with signaling weakness and expectation of defeat and only motivates the Taliban to fight stronger and thus undermines the effectiveness of the surge before it even fully began”-You Decide:
Negotiations and Reconciliation With The Taliban: “The Key Policy Issues and Dilemmas!”–Posted On The Brookings-ByVanda Felbab-Brown, Fellow, 21st Century Defense Initiative, Foreign Policy, the Brookings Institution and Author of Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings 2009)-On January 28, 2010:
Note: My following blog posts relate to and/or support the above articles and/or blog posts and videos-You Decide:
An Open Letter To Communist Valerie Jarrett!-Posted on We The People USA-By Jake Martinez-On August 16, 2012:
Communists and Muslims: The Hidden Hand of the KGB!–Posted on TeaParty.org-By Jake Martinez-On July 29, 2012:
White Reds Exploiting Blacks: The Weather Underground, Barack Obama, and the Fundamental Transformation of the United States!–Posted on We The People USA- By Jake Martinez-On July 28, 2012:
The Vetting: ‘Obama, Radical Islam and the Soros Connection’!-Posted on We The People USA-By Jake Martinez-On July 24, 2012:
Who ran cover for Obama’s Islamic background? ‘Tracing The Politics And The Money Behind Obama’s 2008 Campaign’!-Posted on TeaParty.org-By Jake Martinez-On July 30, 2012:
Note: What follows are articles and/or blog posts and videos that relate to and/or support the above articles and/or blog posts and study report-You Decide:
Special Ops Group Attacks Obama Over Bin Laden Bragging, Leaks!-Posted on We The People USA-By Jake Martinez-On August 15, 2012:
Releasing Terrorists for Peace!-Posted on FrontPage Magazine-By Ryan Mauro-On January 30, 2012:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/30/releasing-terrorists-for-peace/
President Obama and The Brotherhood!-Posted on News With Views-By Michael Moriarty, NewsWithViews.com-On January 15, 2011:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Moriarty/michael127.htm
Getting the Taliban to the Table!-Posted on RealClear Politics-By David Ignatius-On January 11, 2012:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/01/11/getting_the_taliban_to_the_table__112720.html
The Shocking List Of GITMO Detainees Obama Plans To Release In Deal With Taliban!-Posted on The Blaze-By Tiffany Gabbay-On January 9, 2012:
Obama Wants to Continue Secret Talks With Taliban in Europe!-Posted on NewsMax.com-By The Associated Press-On December 30, 2011:
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/US-ObamaAfghanistan-Taliban/2011/12/30/id/422549
Don’t expect much from Taliban!-Posted on The Hill-By Peter W. Galbraith-On June 27, 2011:
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/168685-dont-expect-much-from-taliban
US Negotiating with the Taliban: Bargaining with the Devil?–Posted on Justice In Conflict-By Mark Kersten-On June 21, 2011:
http://justiceinconflict.org/2011/06/21/us-negotiating-with-the-taliban-bargaining-with-the-devil/
US is negotiating with the Taliban, Afghan president Hamid Karzai confirms!-Posted on The Telegraph-On June 18, 2011:
Video: Can U.S. Negotiate With Taliban?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZ14jPOmuE
Obama is Secretly Talking with the Taliban, Says It’s What Reagan Would Do?–Posted on Floyd Reports-By Ben Johnson-On February 22, 2011:
Obama Administration Supports Afghan-Taliban Reconciliation Under Certain Conditions, But Will Those Conditions Be Met?-Posted on CNSNews.com-By Patrick Goodenough-On October 7, 2010:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-supports-afghan-tal
Note: The above articles and/or blog posts and study report relate to and/or support my following blog posts-You Decide:
Godfather of The Islamic Revolution!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/godfather-of-the-islamic-revolution/
Is Our Government Seriously Misreading Al-Qaida’s Operational Objectives?
The Military Pays the Price for Obama’s Agenda!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/the-military-pays-the-price-for-obama’s-agenda/
Veterans and members of our Armed Forces under attack!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/veterans-and-members-of-our-armed-forces-under-attack/
Rules of Engagement Killing Marines and U.S. Soldiers!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/rules-of-engagement-killing-marines-and-u-s-soldiers/
Who owns our supposedly fair and balanced airwaves and news outlets?
Where Is America Today?
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/where-is-america-today-2/
Is it time to call for Obama’s resignation!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/is-it-time-to-call-for-obamas-resignation/
Washington Times Calls for Obama’s Impeachment!
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/washington-times-calls-for-obama’s-impeachment/
A Nation Adrift Theme and Disclaimer:
https://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/disclaimer/
“Food For Thought”
“God Bless & Keep Our USA Safe”
Semper Fi!
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