The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. officials this summer “secretly met with leaders of the deadly Haqqani network, the Afghan militant group closely tied to al Qaeda.” The goal was to “draw them into talks on winding down the war.”
Note that they had not expressed any interest in talks. These were talks about having talks. Talk about dealing from a position of total weakness! And how did they Haqqani network respond? You may recall that they were behind the 20-hour assault last month on the U.S. Embassy. When will we learn that reason, discussion, and compromise are simply not in the vocabulary of fanatics? You can have a serious debate about what our role in Afghanistan should be. But to believe that we can negotiate a settlement with the likes of the Haqqani network is pure ignorance…no, negligence.