The Neville Chamberlin reference came much later than I anticipated.

And while there may be resentment to the "puppet" government put in place by the Americans, it is possible that the general population is incompetent enough to want the Taliban back in power. I mean Americans elected Bush a second time, so I won't rule out the impossible.

That is not a bad idea, but it does legitimize them and could in-turn empower their perception among the people.

Like the Neville Chamberlin reference, the Hitler reference from the other side was expected.

But then you would be implicitly comparing the Jews to the Taliban. Shaky ground there.

He said that, too, incidentally. That the Jews were murderers that couldn't be negotiated with.

Wolves don't attack people. Or prowl neighborhoods. I think you should rephrase this metaphorical rhetorical inquisitorial!

But they're not animals. They're human beings. Which means you can negotiate with them. The Taliban do have the intellectual means to reason. We know this because we have seen images of them flapping their arms and moving their mouths in a manner consistent with human communication. You just want to think of them as animals so you can justify the slaughter of the people you think they represent.

Well, that's what it sounds like to me, anyway.

Now, is there maybe some other reason why you can't negotiate with them?

During the war between the Taliban and the United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance) every single time the Taliban were asked to participate in negotiations they said that there could be no negotiating with the UIF and they had to be wiped out. Once when their Saudi backer, Turki al-Faisal of Saudi's General Intelligence Directorate, visited them and asked them to negotiate they did for about a week and then they resumed fighting as if they had never been asked to negotiate. Ahmed Shah Massoud on the other hand said about the Taliban "We are ready to talk. We don't want to rule the country. We just want a representative government for all Afghans."

So take it from Massoud, negotiating for peace is a good thing. And obviously you would want to broker a good deal. No stupid deals like in WW2 or Vietnam. Though history has shown that the Taliban are not keen on negotiating.

Actually Afghanistan was pretty calm between 1933 and 1973.

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excellent comparison, lunecat. The Irish conflict is great bedside reading for any of you who want to see what the dividends of tough, long-term negotiation can be. The real IRA were terrorists, too, as despicable and radical as the next, to most's eyes. Of course, they were white, and spoke english with pretty accents, so it was hard to label them 'animals', as has been so viciously propounded around this board. But we can, and should negotiate with the Taliban, even if it will take a long time and a lot of frustration.

As has been said, they remain popular in Afghnanistan. Wiping them out or excluding them would only serve to alienate and radicalise their supporters, which would make building a stable democracy more difficult than it already is.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

"negotiate" implies that both sides have negotiable positions.
The taliban/islamo-facist positions are non-negotiable in that they believe they are following directives from God. And amongst those directives is one which commands them to convert or kill every single non-muslim on the planet.

Here's a little test...
My position is that 2+2=5, and it's the absolute truth because my God told me so.
If you don't believe, and I can't convince you that 2+2=5, then you must die.
My God demands your death or belief.

Now - convince me of your "truth", come on - lets negotiate.

Would you have had the US negotiate with the KKK in the post civil war era simply because they were supported, even tacitly, by a majority of southerners? No, of course not. Certain behaviors are unacceptable and must be punitively dealt with.

The taliban could be a part of the government in Afghanistan (if they wanted to) by peacufully proctoring a political adgenda that provides more relief to the Afghan people than the government of President Karsi. So could atta in Iraq for that matter. Both, however, choose to act like warlords and tyrants and only derive their "authority" at gun-point.

Certainly the taliban have their supporters and I even suspect that some of that support is sincere. I do however wonder how many of those "supporters" are simply doing so because they have a 7.62x39 bullet about 10" from the back of their skull. (That's an AK-47's standard round by the way)

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"The Taliban" is not a race of human beings. It is a group of people who willfully collect in order to promote their own insatiable thirst for dictatorial, totalitarian, murderous power. They are animals in every sense of the word. Referring ot them as animals merely connotes the most prolific aspect of the identities THEY HAVE CHOSEN and it bespeaks the condition I have set for them, which is their termination.

There will only be one of two possible outcomes, the Taliban survives or freedom survives. I vote for freedom.

Screw the Taliban and every Muslim on earth that seeks to join them. If killing them all is what it takes to remain free, that is the problem of the Taliban, not me.



I have no problem with them changing. I promote the idea that we begin to change them immediately, from live animals to dead animals.