Bill Frist’s Excellent Adventure
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.
“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished we’ll be successful.”
Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not “out of the question” but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.
“A political solution is how it’s all going to be solved,” he said.
Let’s get one thing perfectly straight: the Taliban was an unmitigated evil. Besides harboring terrorist camps, they were well-known theocratic misogynists who almost literally took Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. I can’t stress enough my complete opposition to this proposal in any way, shape or form, or by any degree.
No, no, no…NO!…
UPDATE 11:43 p.m.: Frist clarifies (hat tip to mtl):
First of all, let me make something clear: The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists who’ve oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. America’s overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.
Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.
National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority … but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into Afghanistan’s government.
That’s better – still not great, but better…
I guess Frist figured that his political career hasn’t imploded enough yet and he might as well put the last nails in his coffin.
If there was ever a more craven politician than Bill Frist, I haven’t heard of him. He’s the only guy in politics who makes Al Sharpton look good. Or better, anyway.
he has a response over at pj media…he says he was misquoted.
I’d give him a pass on this, but I too find Frist tiresome.
We’d have been better off taking the heat, and keeping lott as the majority leader.