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From the diaries, with some editing -- kos)
Bill Frist has just put the final stake in the heart of they myth of Republican toughness on national security.
U.S. Senate majority leader calls for efforts to bring Taliban into Afghan government
Huh? No, really. Huh?
QALAT, Afghanistan 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."
Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
What about Mel Martinez, who was also on the trip?
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.
Sadly, it bears repeating: Taliban = Al Qaeda. They are joined economically, ideologically, and operationally at the hip.
Republicans everywhere are having their heads explode.
Read why below.
How are conservatives receiving this:
Michelle Malkin's outfit:
Update: If we're going to do this, just pull everyone out. Don't lend an imprimatur of legitimacy to it by shepherding these medieval savages into a U.S.-backed government. Pull out, admit defeat, and let the Taliban take back the country through force. Then we can really and truly be back to September 10, 2001. Minus a skyscraper or two.
Secular, rational conservative The Comissar
I have decided to vote Democratic this fall.
Ace of Spades
Goodbye GOP.
Perhaps we should make peace with Zawahiri as well? Let's negotiate, and see what terms we can get as good dhimmis.
The hell with the lot of them.
. . .
I don't need the goddamned Republican Party in power to sign "peace" deals with terrorists. I can get that easily enough from the Democratic Party. I've supported these vacuous, cowardly, inept, corrupt idiots for one reason-- to fight terrorists.
if they want to sign peace deals with them, that's their decision. I and others can make another decision. The country may move in this direction, but we hardly have to endorse the decision by voting in favor of Quislings.
At least the Democrats talk tough about sending more troops to Afghanistan and killing Taliban fighters and capturing bin Ladin.
If that really is no longer a GOP prirority, then I am no longer a member of the GOP.
You stupid jagoffs. You've done just about everything possible to lose this election; it's only the base -- ever hopeful and ever self-deluding -- that's kept you from your goal.
Was governing too much a chore for you? Was it too distracting, taking you away from fundraisers and fucking Congressional pages?
The Democrats have complained for years the GOP wasn't serious enough about defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that it was too focused on Iraq. Congratulations -- you just took a talking point and made it an established fact.
Well, enjoy your minority status. The rest of us will try to rebuild to the extent we can a party that actually sees ending the Taliban and Al Qaeda as somewhat more critical than ending internet poker.
More... I had hoped that the GOP's fear of losing power had shook them out of their moronic, corrupt stupor. I thought July and August were enough to send them a message.
I guess not. They don't learn easy.
It will, in fact, take an electoral drubbing to make them understand.
So let the enlightening begin.
This needs to get blasted all over every kind of media.
Previously diaried
here.