White House National Security Adviser James Jones has said he does not expect a return to power in Afghanistan by the Taliban, despite the resurgence across the country of the hardline Islamist movement.
| They need not actually return to power. They need only prevent the stabilization of Afghanistan, then take advantage of the subsequent anarchy should the Americans redefine victory and leave. |
"I don't foresee the return of the Taliban and I want to be very clear that Afghanistan is not in any danger of falling," Jones has told the CNN program, State of the Union. Taliban militants who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the Islamist regime in 2001 have been on the rebound, especially in North and South Waziristan. But the retired general insists the presence of al-Qaeda - which launched the September 11 terror attacks on the United States - is "very diminished" across Afghanistan.
| Al Qaeda has outsourced both terror skills training and terror attacks. As I recall, the Afghan gentleman arrested in September was trained by one of the ISI-subsidized Pakistani groups... which had nothing about Talib in its name. |
"The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country -- no basis to launch attacks on either us or our allies," Jones said on Sunday.
| And yet an attack was nearly launched. The latest I saw was that the Afghan gentleman tried unsuccessfully to rent trucks in Denver before his friends tried to rent one in Queens. |
The most "alarming" question that keeps Jones up at night, he said, was the possibility of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of violent extremists.
"If we lost track of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction and came into the hands of a radical terrorist group, they would use them. And that bothers me a great deal," he said. "That's why, I think, the pursuit of organisations like al-Qaeda, wherever they are, has to be an international effort and we have to be successful."
| A lovely statement, along the lines of Little birdies in their nests agree. |
Jones took exception on Sunday with criticism from the Republican opposition that rising disapproval of the war was influencing the Democratic president's decision on whether to send more troops.
"I don't play politics, and I certainly don't play it with national security and neither does anyone else I know," Jones said. "The lives of our young men and women are on the line. The strategy does not belong to any political party and I can assure you that the president of the United States is not playing to any political base."
| It seems to me there is a -- hopefully not deliberate -- verbal confusion here between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There may be only a small number of Al Qaeda members remaining in Pakistan, and those the hidden leadership and their henchmen, but there are plenty of Taliban: Pashtun Taliban who are aimed at either conquering/reconquering either Afghanistan or Pakistan, Punjabi Taliban aimed at conquering Pakistan... at any rate, most of the Taliban seem to me to be based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and only some of them wander over the border to cause trouble. There are also plenty of other jihadi groups in Pakistan, and even more elsewhere. These days they all connect to one another and to Al Qaeda, trading off personnel for training, leadership, planning, and execution of attacks -- sort of an international jet set of bad guys. The fact that only 100 or so of them are actual Al Qaeda is no longer germane. |
|