Mullah Omar - The Boys are Back in Town
As George Bush’s days in office (hopefully) wind down, negotiating with terrorists is becoming a cottage industry. Today, Afghan president Kabul mayor Hamid Karzai offered to meet with Mullah Omar (remember him?), and potentially give the Taliban a role in government. At this point, I’m not sure that Karzai has much of a choice.
As Atrios notes today, it’s almost amazing how everything that happened in (or to) America between Sept. 11, 2001 and March, 2003, seems to have fallen down the legacy media memory hole.
When I read the following AP story, I nearly choked:
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai offered Saturday to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace talks and give the militants a high position in a government ministry as a way to end the rising insurgency in Afghanistan.
Reiterating a call for negotiations he has made with increasing frequency over the last several weeks, Karzai also said he was willing to meet with factional warlord leader and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…
Now, wait a second. Isn’t Mullah Omar the guy who was harboring Osama bin-Laden prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan?
Why yes, yes he was.
And hasn’t the Taliban (according to press reports, anyway) been the organization behind acts such as blowing up a bus today in Kabul, killing around 30 people?
Why yes, yes it has been.
And haven’t the NATO forces [read: U.S. military] in Afghanistan been slaughtering Taliban supporters and fighters at a pretty healthy clip?
Why yes, yes they have been.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been saying that the Taliban and warlords control the country. Karzi is, in effect, little more than the mayor of Kabul. His government controls a few square blocks of Kabul, and the NATO / U.S. military forces control 50 feet to either side of any road that an armed convoy happens to be traveling. The Taliban and warlords pretty much have the run of the rest of the country. And there are no lack of recruits for Mullah Omar’s special brand of fundamentalism.
Winter is approaching quickly around the Khyber Pass, and with the change of season, any opportunity to mount an offensive on the Afghan front of the Bush regime’s endless war on whatever. Speaking of which, I’m wondering how the U.S. government is going to respond to the mayor of Kabul’s offer.
How is the mess that Bush created ever going to be cleaned up?
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, the entire country was behind the effort. Even to this day, I have not heard a single critic of the war in Iraq argue that we shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan.
It took tremendous effort to bungle that kind of consensus. But the Bush Administration was up to the task.
Bitter Scribe, for the last few years I’ve often considered starting a blog called “September 12th.” About how a wise leader would have responded to the attacks on Sept 11. For the longest time, I toyed with the idea that say an FDR type would have gone after the Taliban in Afghanistan; but never would have turned to Iraq.
However, the further we get from Sept 2001, the further I get from my assumption that an attack on Afghanistan would have happened. Or would have been the correct course.
In the previous decade, Afghanistan had been bombed back to the 7th century by the Soviets. So, we chose to bomb them back to the 4th century. And according to Don Rumsfeld, Afghanistan did not actually have any sexy/bomb-worthy targets.
I’ve come to beleive, six years on, that better ends awaited America and we suffered a crisis of leadership.
Our President wanted war; his Vice-President wants still more wars…In any other alternate universe these people would be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity; in our world my 17 year old son will be fed into the grist mill…….And the children and grandchildren of the people who are for a third war, will escqpe, and my son will have to pay their price. Life fucking sucks.
Dee, is your son in the military, or planning to go in? If so, and it’s not too late, I advise doing everything up to and including chaining him down to keep him out.