Obama says the US must talk to the Taliban

In a wide ranging discussion with Andrew Marr on the BBC, broadcast in the last hour, President Obama has stated that he believes the US cannot win militarily in Afghanistan and must engage in dialogue with the Taliban to find a solution.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/13478318


This is something the pacifist movement has been saying all along. There is no possibility of a military solution to the Afghan question and that dialogue must take place.

On this issue (and the other topics in the interview are not open to discussion on this thread, please start another thread if you wish to talk about the other issues) I think he is quite right. Unfortunately it has taken ten years of oppressive occupation by coalition forces for the President of the United States to come to the conclusion that the entire world has been shouting at him all along.

Obama seems to want to bite the bullet on this issue and, listening to him, I think there is quite a lot of sincerity there. I feel there is a real will to try to find a mechanism by which meaningful discussion could begin.

The question is........ can he deliver that mechanism..?

It is possible (some may say probable) that there would be opposition to such a move within the US military and various political forces in the US. Does the group believe that if Obama made a serious attempt to negotiate with the Taliban, could he deliver..?

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Speaking as a person whom spent most of his life living in America, I wasn't interested enough in the Middle East to even study or read up about it.

So other than oil trade, I wouldn't have ever bothered with that part of the world in the first place.

If it were me, my negotiating would simply go "Sorry, M'bad. We're all going home now, you carry on with your big bad selves."

All that funding put into harassing the Muslims could've been put towards getting Americans better health coverage.

Fair comment, but whilst I agree with Obama's statement that he has an obligation to defend the people of the United States, the serious problem is how he goes about doing that.

I don't think the US can simply ignore the threat and concentrate on domestic issues.

Quite clearly, going to war has not worked and so a new approach has to be found and taht must include meaningful dialogue. Yes, by all means pull the troops out (and hooray for that), but it has to be replaced with another strategy. Not to do so would simply allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to pick up where they were before.

The US has gotten itself into this dreadful situation and it is now going to take a great deal of diplomatic action to get them out of it, restore peace and recover the US's reputation in the world.

In that absence of any voices (so far) to say that this is a wrong course of action, I can reasonable assume that the group thinks this is the right way to go. Therefore I repeat the original question: Can he deliver..?


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As I understand it, the Taliban are only a threat to the US because the US is interfering with them.

The US can't play world police when they have so many of their own that are suffering and need help.

And Obama doesn't have to say a whole lot to deliver all he needs to tell them is that he's with drawing the troops.

When I was still in the US there were many people in need that could've benefited from everything that has been wasted into military funding.

The problem is, the people pulling the strings and placing US military over there, in the first place, are far from being in need so they never see or realize how those others are hurting.

The only thing the world can do to help is to let those Muslims, whom do not want that way of life, to immigrate into and take shelter in their countries - not just the US but all countries taking part in the United Nations.

Found this article to be quite interesting in regard to the US pulling out of Afghanistan .

I made some similar points in my journal post last week.


https://www.theforumsite.com/users/Jennifer1984/journal/78711

We have long since known that America's route out of Afghanistan will be to "declare victory and leave", a la Dubya's "Mission Accomplished" banner on leaving Iraq when nothing of the sort had actually happened.

After the Marr / Obama interview this morning, BBC News interviewed General Sir Mike Rose (now retired) who was quite open about the entire conduct of these wars under American command. He stated that the belief amongst the coalition forces was that they would be welcomed by Iraqis and nobody saw the insurgency situation which developed coming. In short, there never was a "Plan B".

Military interventionism has dramatically failed and Obama is faced with having to extricate American troops without it looking like surrender, or the abject failure that it is.

It will be interesting to see what spin they come up with to make the inevitable retreat look like any sort of victory, but to be honest, I don't care. I'd just like to see this whole sorry, shabby episode in history put away and for our countries to learn the lesson that war doesn't solve anything, and was put into words so concisely by Winston Churchill so many years ago:

"Jaw jaw is better than war war".


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I think we should have many more discussions like the one we had two weeks ago with Bin Laden..

And I'm happy to see that our president feels the same way.

Dialog should go like this:

US: Knock Knock
Terrorist: Who's there?
US: Blam! Bullet through your brain
Terrorist: Thud..

That's the sort of dialog that terrorists understand.

Talking is always better than shooting if it's going to lead to something productive. That's anything but certain with an entity like the Taliban. Unfortunately for Pres. Obama the damage to Afghanistan was done in the 8 year half-baked attempt at military action perpetrated by his predecessor, leaving the outcome to any of his options looking bleak. However, simply abandoning Afghanistan would be imprudent. The US did that after helping the Afghans defeat the Soviets and that led to the rise of the Taliban which harbored bin Ladan and company. A little like tilling up a field and then not planting anything. All you'll get are weeds.

Wow. Anyone who thinks you can actually talk to, and reason with the taliban, is off their trolley.

My memory isn't what it used to be but...when he first became president, didn't Obama say that he was going to talk to them and the rest of the country went "You can't do that!"

Could always invite them over to Downing Street for a cup o' tea n' a chat.

It seems a little naive to me. Does the Taliban even WANT to talk? Even if they do, what kind of concessions would they demand and what would they be willing to give up? Diplomacy is always the better option, but I'm not so sure it's doable in this case.

You can't defeat terrorism with military force, simple as.

Of course the Taliban dont want to talk. Why should they? They're winning.

Would it respond to conversation any better though? I just don't see how we could even open relations with a group of people that so totally, so violently, opposes every single aspect of our culture. I don't see how we could ever come to a truce with the taliban.