In a recent statement put out by the Taliban, they said that would make a "legal guarantee" not to interfere with the West. Their main condition was that all international troops be taken out of Afghanistan. This guarantee however was not stated in what form it would look like. Whether it be a legal document, by word, etc. Many US officials however are not sure how they can trust the Taliban in this issue due to past actions. US officials do say that if the Taliban really does want this to work, they should openly denounce terrorism. I believer we should get out of Afghanistan but not right now. We should leave troops there for a bit but pull them out in not to long of time.
Sidenote:
I've been looking around the net since I was bored and I came upon a site that presented 50 "kickass" websites that were under the radar. I got interested and started reading a few of them, and i must say a lot of them are pretty cool. I also found a cool website for news junkies (where i got this article).
50 sites: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/50_awesome_websites?page=0,0
news: http://newsmap.jp/
hope u guys enjoy it
Saturday, December 5, 2009
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7 comments:
With no other information and just by reading your post, I feel like this is a good start, on behalf of the Taliban, on our relations with Afghanistan. We all have to start somewhere, and this might be it. If the US and the Middle East continue to be more open to diplomacy, we could establish a better image of America around the world.
In my opinion, the problem here is that the words "legal guarantee" have different significance coming from a group like the Taliban. Honestly, when a group gets an agenda met often through aggressive ways that don't conform to any kind of diplomatic principles, when it starts dealing in the way other countries conduct themselves it's interesting and significant but not exactly earth-shattering. Perhaps offers such as this signal changes taking place, but just as the United States official says in that WSJ article, when the Taliban won't break with terrorists while making this sort of proposal, it doesn't mean much.
The United States shouldn't ignore statements such as these, but I think our media place too much excitement on this sort of thing.
What are you trying to say? It looks as though you found a article on CNN, summarized it in 2 sentences and said something totally unrelated to the article.
Though related to your (very broad) opinion about pulling out of Afghanistan, I have some input:
On the News Hour yesterday, Hillary Clinton was interviewed about the NATO conference, and seemed optimistic about the coalition "surge" that is planned to occur within the next few months. Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Nicolas Sarcozy and the UK's Gordon Brown all voiced concern about the recent disputed presidential election between the incumbent Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, yet they agree that the UN coalition army needs to show support for Karzai's new government, and all unofficially pledged more troops for the aforementioned surge. To me, this is troublesome. Edward Luttwak, author of a 2006 article in Foreign Affairs entitled "give war a chance", explains the the ethnic trouble in Afghanistan happens because a balance of power has yet to be achieved between them, thus the US-led coalition, acting as a buffer between the Taliban and the recognized government only exacerbates the underlying issue: the Taliban is too powerful and popular with a minority of Afghans to be completely ignored. The best thing that the US can do is withdraw completely from the region and let the two groups "fight it out", per se. Until the Taliban get some say in the Afghan Parliament, there will be no appeasing them.
That's all for my argument, but now I have a few more things to add: this blog has turned from a serious political forum into utter chaos. It is disappointing. People, if you have nothing to add, saying "I agree" only makes everyone hate you, so stop.
I see that I need to help this blog to get back on its feet, after finals are over next week I plan to start doing that.
-Max Bern (R)
Silton has already said that Max, you're not making some miraculous breakthrough lol, welcome back though.
I'm not saying I disagree with pulling our troops out, far from it, but I do have some comments on what Max thinks is the best plan.
You are definitely right about the Taliban not being appeased until they have some say. But seeing as we already have military force in Afghanistan, and that a large amount of Americans approve of helping other governments fix their problems (though I definitely support not getting so involved), perhaps we should start by convincing the Afghan government to give the Taliban a legitimate legal way to have representation in the government.
Denouncing and attacking terrorism doesn't work very well, but if you give the terrorists at least some of the representation they want, then you have both a better democracy, and less terrorism.
-Ilan Seid-Green
Max, welcome back to the blog. And I must repeat what Anders has said, it's been like this for a long time, if not past the first week or two since school started. It is rather disappointing, it seems most people are here to get points and not actually discuss. Oh well, you'll add some flavor again to the blog that needs it badly.
Anyway..
I think most of the points have been addressed by Ilan, Max and Anders, so I don't have too much to add besides this. Max, I guess the counter argument would be why let our soldiers die in vain when they have already been in there for so long and then just pull out. But also, though your plan seems to be the best plan in theory, I don't think it will carry out as nicely as it seems it should. Here in the US, with our Revolution, the South gave in after an obvious loss and held on to their pride, if you will. (I think that's bad wording, but hopefully, you get my point). But in case of the Taliban, they have already proven that suicide bombings and other scare tactics are not too much of an issue. Even if they do get a part of what they want, will it stop them from continuing until they get everything they want? I could be completely wrong and please call me out on it if I am, but that seems to be the impression left on me by the talks.
I totally agree with you Max.
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