{"id":3450,"date":"2010-11-24T02:24:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T10:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2010-11-24T02:24:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T10:24:12","slug":"just-who-is-the-enemy-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/24\/just-who-is-the-enemy-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Who Is the Enemy, Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of us were hopeful that the high level negotiations between the Karzai regime in Afghanistan and the Taliban, undertaken with NATO assistance and approval might yield conditions conducive to an early withdrawal from this war.  Sadly, these negotiations have come to nothing, because our leadership in that theatre have no idea who the enemy is.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"24taliban\"For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement. <\/p>\n

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not him,\u201d said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. \u201cAnd we gave him a lot of money<\/font><\/strong>.\u201d <\/p>\n

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership. <\/p>\n

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge. <\/p>\n

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Chris Hayes discusses the issue with Jeremy Scahill<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

I take two things away from this.<\/font><\/p>\n

A war in which our biggest ally in the region actively supports the people fighting US troops is unwinnable and makes absolutely zero sense.<\/font><\/p>\n

A general, whose intelligence is so bad that he does not even know who the enemy leaders are, has no business commanding US troops.  Unless David Petraeus has the decency to resign, head hung low in shame, Obama should replace him.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us were hopeful that the high level negotiations between the Karzai regime in Afghanistan and the Taliban, undertaken with NATO assistance and approval might yield conditions conducive to an early withdrawal from this war.  Sadly, these negotiations have come to nothing, because our leadership in that theatre have no idea who the enemy […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}