Taliban

On Sunday, insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks on Western embassies in Kabul, as well as other targets throughout Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s interior minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, said that at least two detained terrorists – one captured in Kabul, the other in Jalalabad – have told authorities that the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network is responsible.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the State Department’s man in Kabul, is clearly concerned about a premature drawdown of American and Western forces from Afghanistan.

The Obama administration’s fantasyland attempt at talks with the Taliban took another significant blow on Thursday. In a statement released online, Mullah Omar’s organization announced that it “has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned and until they show willingness in carrying out their promises instead of wasting time.”

During a hearing on Thursday, Democratic senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, publicly doubted the Obama administration’s decision to consider transferring five senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo to Qatar.

The Obama administration is continuing to pursue peace talks with the Taliban, even as the Taliban openly rejects the goals of those talks. 

In one of my few real conversations with President George W. Bush, I was struck by the degree to which he seemed always to have given thought to this question: How would what he said, and what his subordinates said, affect the morale of those fighting for our nation, and their families? Bush was willing to say something that wasn’t politically advantageous—and not to say something that might have been—if he thought this would adversely affect the spirit of those he had the honor to command.

White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about Vice President Joe Biden's comments on the Taliban earlier today. "Look," Biden said in an interview in Newsweek, "the Taliban per se is not our enemy."

The Obama administration is still pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, even if it doubts a viable negotiating partner sits across the table. And, as part of this ad hoc diplomatic effort, the administration is considering the transfer of Taliban members held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan. Those are the two key takeaways from a new piece published by Reuters (“Secret U.S., Taliban talks reach turning point”).

The New York Times reports today that senior officials within the Obama administration are pressing for an accelerated withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. The “rationale” for that pressure is supposedly the success of America’s efforts against al Qaeda and the fact that “the counterterrorism campaign, which was favored by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2009, has outperformed the more troop-intensive counterinsurgency campaign pushed by Mr. Gates, Gen. David H. Petraeus and other top military planners.”

Later this month, President Obama will decide the size and scope of the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. July 2011 marks the beginning of a process that should ultimately result in the complete transfer of security responsibilities to the Afghans by 2014.

In an interview with President Obama on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft asked:

Right now, it certainly...the location of the compound just raises all sorts of questions. Do you believe people in the Pakistani government, Pakistani intelligence agencies knew that bin Laden was living there?