My latest in PJ Media:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday: “If the Taliban don’t behave, if they don’t deliver on the commitments that they’ve made to us now for weeks, and in some cases months, the president is not going to reduce the pressure, we’re not going to reduce our support for the Afghan security forces that have fought so hard there in Afghanistan.”
Well, then, apparently we’re going to stay in Afghanistan forever and a day, because here is a news flash: the Taliban aren’t going to “behave.”
Pompeo’s statement comes after President Trump announced that he had scheduled peace talks with “major leaders” of the Taliban at Camp David. Pompeo explained, “President Trump ultimately made the decision. He said, ‘I want to talk to [President] Ashraf Ghani. I want to talk to these Taliban negotiators. I want to look them in the eye. I want to see if we can get to the final outcome we needed.’”
However, Trump canceled these talks after the Taliban killed an American soldier. The President suggested that these talks would be resumed if the Taliban changed their behavior. When he was asked Sunday if the administration’s talk with the Taliban were dead, Pompeo implied that they were not, saying, “For the time being they are.”
But the Taliban are not going to change their behavior, because that behavior is based on what they consider to be their responsibility before the god of the universe.
Even if the Taliban decide to give the appearance of “behaving,” it will be after the manner of the “Palestinians”: an insincere commitment to peace talks that they are only participating in so as to win concessions from the Afghan government and Trump that they couldn’t win on the battlefield.
This entire comic opera of negotiations with the Taliban never would have taken place if there had been a clear understanding of the nature, motives, and goals of the Taliban’s jihad, but there isn’t, because that would lead to the airing of uncomfortable facts about Islam, and while this administration isn’t as committed to fantasy Islam as the last one, it still has a long way to go to reach a realistic approach.
There is much more. Read the rest here.