It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.
“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.
Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.
But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.
If there was one characteristic most attributed to Dick Cheney, one of the Wingnut draft dodgers, it was hubris.
Now, twenty years, thousands of dead American and a trillion dollars or so later, all we have are ashes. Even if, down the road, we have to go back and bomb them flat, they won't give up (uness Pakistan has a total change of heart)\.
Heckuvajob, Chimpy.
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