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March 14, 2009 Obama's futile search for 'moderate radicals'By Richard L. BenkinPresident
Obama is copying the policy of the Pakistani government whereby it has
identified elements of the Taliban that it believes are moderate; that
is, amenable to negotiation. This, of course, is criminally
naïve. Our history with Islamist radicals is that the only time
they negotiate is when they believe themselves too weak for a military
win and consider themselves bound to any "negotiated peace" only until
they are strong enough for total victory. Last
month, Pakistan's government concluded an agreement with those moderate
radicals whereby it allowed Sharia law to replace the law of the land
in the Swat Valley and Taliban control to replace its own. In
exchange, the Taliban agreed to a "permanent peace." Does anyone
want to guess how permanent that will be? The Swat Valley,
moreover, is located less than 100 miles from the Pakistani capital of
Islamabad. It is home to over 1.2 million people who now have
been consigned to live under the same tyrannical rule that pertained in
Afghanistan before the Taliban was defeated there. There is also
a giant stone statue of Buddha in the area, which likely will meet the
fate of those that used to exist in Afghanistan. As
reported on Fox News at the time, NATO "blasted" the agreement and
predicted that the Taliban would only use the ceasefire to become more
powerful. Even Amnesty International objected, fearing it would
legitimize the Taliban's human rights abuses. The new Obama
administration was silent, perhaps mulling over the idea for itself. Pakistan's
government claims that the agreement was not "capitulation but the
price of peace" in the region. Taliban leaders, however, say that
capitulation is precisely what is it-and I cannot believe that there is
something on which we agree. Capitulation was the price of
peace. Taliban leaders claim that it was their unrelenting war in
the valley and their policy of burning homes and other buildings
indiscriminately that forced the government to surrender.
Now,
Obama has decided that this is a pretty good idea and has let it be
known that he is ready to negotiate with "moderate Taliban." Thus
far, the Taliban response has been that they, too, are ready, so long
as the United States will "stop your military action in Pakistan and
Afghanistan."
This
is about as wrong-headed a policy as one could imagine. Although
people grow weary of comparisons with the Nazis, we might consider this
one. In 1937, the British and French agreed to let Hitler have
the part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland as the price of
"peace in our time," which was the British leader's famous quote after
the concession. It was not long, however, before Hitler gobbled
up the rest of that nation and soon embarked on his war for global
domination that cost tens of millions of lives. The
Pakistanis ceded this one part of their country with same motives as
their 1937 precursors. But less than one month later, Taliban
forces already have taken over larger chunks of their country, and the
civilian government is in shambles with politicians bickering while
Pakistan burns. Most observers believe that only a military coup
(which likely will occur as soon as March 16), will save nuclear
Pakistan from becoming a Taliban state.
Mr. Obama better take note of the price of appeasement.
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