“Reconciliation with the Taliban will ultimately be a goal for Afghanistan once U.S. and Afghan forces create conditions to allow it, Gen. David Petraeus said Wednesday.
“Speaking in Afghanistan to Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin — in her first overseas assignment since recovering from breast cancer — Petraeus said that orders approved by provincial governors and local leaders Wednesday enable implementation of measures ordered by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to reintegrate the “$10-a-day Taliban” into society.”
You heard me, he’s right. The essence of a civil war or an insurgency is that something is fundamentally wrong with the body politic. Reconciliation (and progress afterwards) is the goal of the conflict, because you want to build something better and remove the essential cause of the conflict. We Americans know this– “With malice toward none, with charity toward all…” Abraham Lincoln was advocating reconciliation with the insurgent side, a bold position to take after four years of brutal Civil War.
Note, however, that this has to come from a position of strength, as true in 2010 as it was in 1865–“once U.S. and Afghan forces create conditions to allow it.” The reconciliation will be on our terms, not theirs. In a permutation of General Mattis’s immortal phrase, they can have the open hand or the fist.
This is absolutely the proper course to take. Let the good General– and the unlovely but necessary President Karzai– go forth and do it, with all the support the nation can muster. And let POTUS have the good sense to let them carry on with it.
