Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Legitimizing them, however, will be hard for some Americans to swallow. Already, hawks have slammed Obama for negotiating with Iran's mullahs while the blood of Iranian protesters is still fresh on their hands. And "reconciliation" with the Taliban, while necessary for the U.S.'s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, might be a horror show for Afghan women. It is worth noting that while many historians applaud Nixon's retreat from global containment, his decision to cozy up to dictators in Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere elicited revulsion from Americans on both left and right...
...Qaeda, however, a cold war with Tehran makes little sense. For all its nastiness, the Iranian regime doesn't direct its terrorism against the U.S. And Iran's Shi'ite theocrats have a mostly hostile relationship with the anti-Shi'ite theocrats of al-Qaeda. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has caused trouble for the U.S. largely out of fear that if the U.S. prevails in those countries, Iran will be next. But the Obama Administration seems to believe that if the U.S. can convince Iran's regime that it's not next, Washington and Tehran can cooperate...
...Iran's and movements like the Taliban, he's not in a particularly strong position to do so. Back in 2002 or 2003, when the U.S. looked almost invincible, the Iranians appeared willing to concede a lot simply to forestall a U.S. attack. Now, with the U.S. mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are less afraid and thus less willing to deal. Similarly, the Taliban have little incentive to break with al-Qaeda so long as they feel they're gaining momentum in the Afghan war. It will be hard for Obama to win at the negotiating table what...
...most urgent and high-profile item on Obama's downsizing agenda is, of course, Afghanistan. For eight years, the Bush Administration lumped al-Qaeda and the Taliban together. It was the most obvious application of Bush's famous declaration that "we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." But now the Obama Administration is making exactly that distinction. "There is clearly a difference between" the Taliban and al-Qaeda, press secretary Robert Gibbs said recently. A host of Obama officials have insisted that the Taliban is a tribal and national movement...
...local roots, Obama officials suggest, also make it harder to vanquish than al-Qaeda. The implication is that as with Hizballah and Hamas, the U.S.'s only realistic goal is to bring the Taliban into the political process. Despite his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Obama has abandoned the goal of making the country Taliban-free. For all the attention it has received, the decision about troop levels is essentially tactical: it's an effort to win the military leverage necessary to persuade elements of the Taliban that they're better off in government than...