Taliban is playing Obama

Marc Thiessen:

Now in 2013, the Taliban has once again promised, in a statement announcing the opening of its new political office in Qatar, that it “does not wish to harm other countries from its soil and neither will it allow others use Afghan soil to pose a threat to the security of other nations.”

Don’t believe a word of it.

Taliban leaders are not interested in sharing power. Their goal is to get the United States out of the way so they can take over Afghanistan.

So why are the Taliban negotiating? Simple. It knows that Barack Obama wants to leave Afghanistan and close Guantanamo Bay — and they want to help him do both.

~~~

We’ve allowed them to do all this while getting no concessions whatsoever in return. The Taliban has not cut ties with al-Qaeda (something former secretary of state Hilary Clinton once said was an “unambiguous red line”). It has not recognized the Afghan government. It has not renounced violence.

Quite the opposite, it has escalated violence. On the same day it opened its office in Qatar to “negotiate” with the United States, the Taliban launched a rocket attack on Bagram Air Base that killed four U.S. soldiers. How’s that for a confidence-building measure?

The Taliban delegation in Qatar includes members of the Haqqani network — a group that the Obama administration just designated a terrorist organization. Are we really going to sit down with representatives of a group that, according to our State Department, was responsible for the September 2011 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, among other terrorist attacks? What’s next? Opening talks with Ayman Zawahiri?

The idea that anything can come of these negotiations is pure folly. The Taliban have no incentive to make concessions. They know that America is leaving Afghanistan. They know that Obama cannot wait to get out. Their objective is not to share power with the Afghan government. It is to replace the Afghan government.

Negotiating with us helps them achieve that goal.