What, No GOP Outrage?

General McChrystal is proposing to cut a deal with the Taliban:

General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, has raised the prospect that his troop surge will lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban. ...

“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” he said. “What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.”

Asked if he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in Kabul, he said: “I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.”

You'd think that the GOP Outrage Machine would be calling McChrystal a "surrender monkey" about now. But oh, wait, the GOP's favorite general, David Petraeus, is saying much the same thing:

Frontline offensives will run alongside initiatives to reach out to Taleban elements. When the time was right, General Petraeus said, there was a possibility that Afghan officials would hold reconciliation talks with senior Taleban and other insurgent leaders, perhaps also involving Pakistan.

Of course, if a Democrat had argued that we should be negotiating with the Taliban, the bloviators of the right would be calling for heads to be taken.

The problem, though, is obvious. Right now, the Taliban probably believe that they have the wind at their backs. The NATO, American and Afghan forces have to convince them otherwise if there is to be a negotiated end to this war.