Posted by
Dawnsblood on Monday, October 02, 2006 6:02:04 PM
Bill Frist showed his
intellectual acumen today in 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."
Thank God this nitwit is isn't running this year and if he thinks he will ever be President he must be sampling "The Product" in country.
Update: In Frist's defence... Bill Frist.
Update 2: Maybe I jumped the gun? One of the smartest bloggers on the Internet seems to think this is much ado about nothing. Cpt Ed Says:
So what happened? I think that someone confused "Taliban" with
"Taliban supporters" at some point, and whether that was Frist or the
reporter will probably remain a point of contention between the two. At
any rate, Bill Frist is not calling for the return of the Taliban and
an end to democracy in Afghanistan.
However, it does bring up an important point about the eventual end
game in Afghanistan. If we want a representative democracy in
Afghanistan, it will probably be heavily influenced by the Pashtuns,
who have a strong Islamist bent. They did, after all, push the Taliban
into power. At some point, we have to find a way to convince these
Islamists to buy into democracy, and we have to be willing to allow
that democracy to develop its own laws and customs. Otherwise, we will
have to prop up a strongman who can keep the Pashtuns oppressed, which
will create an even greater Islamist impulse in Afghanistan.