Obama to Taliban--->Americans Have No Guts

President Obama's announcement that he has directed the Military to seek out "moderate" members of the Taliban to negotiate with proves how little he knows about terrorists.  The number one lesson is you can't show them any weakness, and Obama's declaration was like saying that Americans have no guts.

The president has indicated that the overture to the Taliban is a duplication of the "surge" strategy. Maybe because he was too busy bashing the surge, Obama had now Idea how it really worked. Firstly, before the local tribal chiefs switch sides, the United States had to show that it had turned the tide militarily.  Beyond that, the famous  Anbar Awakening began when local warlords who were under the thumb of al Qaeda began to hate their terrorist oppressors. In the case of the President, he wants to find elements within the terrorist oppressors to become pals with.

It seems that Mr. Obama wants to do the same thing to the War on Terror that he is doing the economy:

In Search Of Moderate Islamofascists


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, March 09, 2009 4:20 PM PT


Afghanistan: President Obama says negotiation is the key to success in the land that gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden. How would that have sounded to American ears in the weeks right after 9/11?


In an interview published in Sunday's New York Times, the president said, "Part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaida in Iraq."


From that, he construed: "There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region."


Jon Boone, Kabul correspondent for Britain's left-leaning Guardian newspaper, noted in a story on Monday skeptical of the president's overture, that "until recently U.S. officials worried that the American public would not stomach such overtures."


Have Americans forgotten the images of September 11? Have we forgotten the non-negotiable demands we made of the Taliban just nine days after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on our soil?


Recall that former President Bush, before a special joint session of Congress, said:


"Tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al-Qaida who hide in your land" and "close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating."


He added that "the Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate."


Now, however, as Boone was told by Haroun Mir, former adviser to Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, "things are all going the Taliban's way. They are at the edge of Kabul" and have no incentive to switch sides in the present situation.


Indeed, Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi reacted to President Obama's suggestion by calling it a sign that Americans, after so many years fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan are now "tired and worried."


Taliban forces right now seem to be uniting and strengthening themselves. Three rival strands of the Pakistani Taliban — those of warlords Gul Bahadur, Baitullah Mehsud, suspected of being behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Maulvi Nazir — have joined together as the Council of United Holy Warriors in anticipation of the coming arrival of 17,000 new armored troops and Marines this year.


Afghan Taliban head Mullah Omar recently urged the Pakistani Taliban to refocus their jihad on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and is in no mood for deals with the Great Satan or its friends in the current Afghan government.


Omar is notorious for his inflexibility. Speaking to Reuters, Pakistani analyst Rahimullah Yousufzai noted: "The Taliban are very rigid in their demands. They actually don't want to talk unless there is some guarantee that Western forces will leave."


Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai knows this, having failed to engage Taliban moderates despite years of trying.


President Obama is demonstrating a misunderstanding of why the Bush surge turned things around in Iraq. In September 2007, as he questioned Gen. David Petraeus and then-Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker during Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, then-Sen. Obama remarked: "It is not clear to me that the primary success that you've shown in Anbar has anything to do with the surge."


In fact, the "Anbar Awakening," in which U.S. military successfully persuaded local Iraqi leaders to rebel against the terrorists in an al-Qaida-dominated region written off as beyond hope, would never have succeeded without an assertive U.S. military presence, which was then enhanced by the surge.


Whomever the Obama administration is considering "reaching out to" will likely be the Taliban equivalent of a Goebbels or a Goering. Imagine dealing with them after committing ourselves to a total defeat of Hitler.


After the uncompromising demands we made of the Taliban in September 2001, such a change only would be viewed by Islamofascists worldwide as more proof of the infidels' lack of nerve.