Written By : Warner Todd Huston

If one can believe a word Senator John Kerry (D, Mass) says, the United States is launching efforts to negotiate with Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.

“I can report without being specific that there are efforts under way. They are serious and I completely agree with that fundamental premise — and so does General [David] Petraeus and so does President Obama — there is no military solution,” Kerry told NPR. “And there are very active efforts now to seek an appropriate kind of political settlement.”

So that means that Obama is willing to negotiate with terrorists that kill little girls for wanting to go to school, kill people for listening to music, destroy world art treasures like the Bamyan Buddhas, stone women and gays just because they can, and murder innocent aid workers and doctors.

What a great idea, Obama!

But notice the political points that Kerry is trying to score here. He wants voters to hear him say the war is lost and we can’t win in Afghanistan. Just like Obama, just like most Democrats, the words “victory,” or “win” are not in Kerry’s vocabulary.

But then, as the bumbling Kerry is wont, he in essence contradicted himself by adding that an “appropriate” settlement would include “a renunciation of al-Qaeda,” a “reduction of violence,” a “recognition of the constitutional rights of both Pakistan and Afghanistan and greater efforts to reduce sanctuaries for insurgency.”

Is this man not paying attention to what is going on in Afghanistan? These things are all the things that the more radical members of the Taliban are fighting FOR. They won’t just give them up because Obama asked them to!

General Petraeus, Afghan force commander, however had a different take on these “negotiations.”

Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thought “there is a prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups,” specifically citing HIG (Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin) insurgents who have squabbled with the Taliban and have made overtures to the Afghan government to agree to the conditions laid out.

“But every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration, and indeed, some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.”

Of course that makes sense. We should have from day one been trying to cajole those pockets of Afghan rebels that are only marginally supportive of the Taliban to come our way. It is a no-brainer, if you will.

But what Kerry said undermines the very efforts that Petraeus is trying to do. Kerry’s confused words makes it seem as if we are negotiating with ALL of the Taliban as opposed to the marginal groups that we might convince to turn away from Taliban ideals.

What Petraeus said makes sense. What Kerry said is ill informed and badly stated. But we are used to that with the bumbling John Francois Kerry, aren’t we?

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