As for persuading the Taliban to leave the dark side, well, it depends on which sect, group or tribe you’re talking about.
Not everyone armed with an AK-47 is Taliban all the time; they are not a monolithic entity. They are, at best, a network of tribal groups and warlords. If it works to their advantage to confront NATO and the central Afghan government, they will; if not, they won't.
As all of this plays out, Americans increasingly are losing confidence in the war. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that more than half of respondents believe the war is not worth fighting.
Purdue University political scientist Bert Rockman hopes President Obama can educate Americans about the security consequences of the war. “But no one may wish to listen until we find ourselves in another 9/11,” he says.
It looks as if Obama’s strategy is to buy off and to kill off, he explains: “In other words, buy out the Talibani who are susceptible to a buy-out, and kill off the others.”
Whether that can succeed is another matter.
While some analysts opine that Obama risks the same political fate as Lyndon Johnson, who inherited the unpopular Vietnam War, that may be a stretch.
Yet keep in mind that while foreign policy can destroy a president (as it did LBJ), it almost never saves one (think Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush).
“Obama knows when to give up the ghost,” Rockman says, and “if the war goes badly, he probably will get us out.”
At what cost, however?
Vietnam was one thing; it wasn’t going to attack us.
Yet if the Taliban agrees not to harbor terror organizations again, as it did al-Qaeda pre-9/11, we may settle for that – even at the severe cost of human rights, especially of women, in Afghanistan.