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Never Negotiate with Terrorists
Do you remember who was the first person to say we should never negotiate with terrorists?—
America will never make concessions to terrorists–to do so would only invite more terrorism- nor will we ask or pressure any other government to do so. Once we head down that path there would be no end to it, no end to suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized nations must pay.
President Ronald Reagan made this statement in 1985 when TWA Flight 847 was hijacked. Although the U.S. was closely monitoring this terrorist act, we did not participate in negotiations.
Then we see President Barack Obama supposedly not negotiating with terrorists for the deserter, Bowe Bergdahl in 2014:
The difference with Bergdahl, as Obama argues, is that he wasn’t really a hostage grabbed by terrorists. He pretty neatly fit the classic definition of a prisoner of war. He had just left a military outpost in an obvious war zone while (presumably) wearing his uniform. History is loaded with examples of nations—including America—making deals to free their soldiers.
And however nasty the Taliban may be, it’s not really a “terrorist” enemy as we commonly understand the word. The group is not on the State Department’s official list of terrorist organizations and has long been a battlefield enemy in the ground war for control of Afghanistan. It is not plotting to, say, hijack American airplanes—even if it does have sympathies with people who are. [my bold]
Many of us would agree that Obama did negotiate with terrorists; funny how events and labels can change in the face of our abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban.
We are now in the position, because of our disastrous decisions in Afghanistan, of having to negotiate with the Taliban. No matter how many times Jen Psaki tries to wordsmith “negotiate,” the results are the same.
* * * *
Whatever you want to call our collaboration with the Taliban, a group that we are now dependent on to allow the flying of citizens and allies out of the country, there is a major concern that no one has addressed regarding the reliability of the Taliban: taqqiya. The terrorists embrace the practice of taqqiya, and it could dangerously compromise our working with them. Here are a couple of definitions:
Quran (3:28) – This verse instructs believers not to take those outside the faith as friends, unless it is to ‘guard themselves’ against danger, meaning that there are times when a Muslim may appear friendly to non-Muslims, even though they should not feel friendly.
Quran (66:2) – ‘Allah has already ordained for you the dissolution of your oaths…’ For today’s reader, the circumstances for betraying your word are not specified, leaving this verse open to interpretation. According to Yusuf Ali in his commentary: ‘if your vows prevent you from doing good, or acting rightly, or making peace between persons, you should expiate the vow.’ (Presumably, whatever advances the cause of Islam would qualify as ‘doing good’).
The message from the Koran is loud and clear, according to Muslim extremists: lying is okay, and Allah does not object to lying.
* * * *
Now we find ourselves in the position of having to work with terrorists who are willing to lie to justify their actions. We have no reason to believe that they will follow through on any of their agreements. We have no reason to think that they are telling us the truth regarding their treatment of citizens or allies. We have no reason to think that they will not harbor terrorists like al Qaeda who have already attacked us in our own country; I’m quite confident that the Haqqani network will be happy to help them out in executing foreign attacks.
Who knows what demands they are making, or will make in the future, to get what they need and want? Why should they value the lives of our countrymen and allies when they do not value life but instead celebrate martyrdom? What makes us think that they will change their “transition government” to a group of people more acceptable to us? In fact, why should they do anything that is acceptable to us?
I see no other choice than our sending in military in some way that we can at least temporarily put the Taliban on their heels. Otherwise, our losses may very well be more deadly than we can imagine.
Congress must act. Now.
Do you have other strategies we could try?
Published in Islamist Terrorism
I was not happy with Trump talking to them at all.
I agree with you! The people who snuck in should not have been allowed; we have no way of adequately screen them for starters. Our military claiming they have been vetted is a joke: how many of those people are in any data base?? We should have found a way to focus on our citizens and the Afghans who assisted us. Period.
Here’s an interesting take on our rapid exit in a Gatestone Institute piece —
The circumstantial evidence available thus far strongly suggests this is true.
Michael Yon is all over this stuff. https://michaelyon.locals.com/
I finally joined locals.com (no fee, no credit card for sign-up) just for Yon’s stuff.
Hang On, I’m going to disagree with you a bit, but primarily about timing.
I think that there was good reason to evacuate our embassy in Kabul, as the Taliban are unpredictable, and this avoided the risk of another Iranian-style hostage crisis.
If the Taliban are interested in governing Afghanistan — and I think that they are — then they’re going to want recognition. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait a while before extending recognition, and plan to reopen the embassy in connection with that recognition?
We seem to have a decent backdoor at the moment, particularly through the Qataris. I’ve read multiple reports of a Qatari envoy helping to get Americans out of Afghanistan.
I’ve read another report about a possible famine in Afghanistan in the coming months. They’re going to want help with that, and the Taliban may be bright enough to realize that they’re not going to get such help if they behave too badly.
Susan, on the point of the OP:
It’s usually necessary to negotiate with one’s enemies. We even negotiated, in a misleading sort of way, with the Italians, Germans, and Japanese at the end of WWII, despite having demanded that surrender be unconditional. The discussion was a bit awkward — something like “so what are the conditions under which we would be surrendering unconditionally?”
There are some circumstances in which you don’t want to negotiate, like a hostage crisis.
We have embassies in China, Cuba, and Venezuela. It is quite normal to have an embassy in a hostile country.
I don’t see negotiation with a foreign power was the same as negotiation as terrorists.
And, I am all for negotiation to get hostages back.
Then incinerate the people who took them after your hostages are back. The whole point is to send the message that terror attacks are not worth it.
In order to have an embassy in Washington. In order to show they are not isolated and have options beyond their neighbors Pakistan, China and Iran plus those in the Arab world. But you are right, I don’t know they would.
What are the tools the US has used since the war on terrorism began? Invade, bomb, and sanction. How will that work with a nuclear power? Which goes a long way towards North Korea’s behavior when we rather disingenuously talk about their nuclear disarmament.
Another thing to remember about Pakistan is that we have had long-term parallel interests other than Afghanistan during the Cold War. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are very close.
It also puts a lie to Bush’s all the democracies will necessarily be on the same side as though World War I never occurred.
That is exactly why negotiating should occur – to gather intelligence in order to destroy them.
The embassy’s status could have potentially been in the negotiations in Qatar. And relying on the Qatari for the primary source of intelligence on Afghanistan seems like a good way of getting played.
Good points, @hangon.
Both UNICEF and the Red Cross continued to operate in Afghanistan as the Taliban were taking over because local Taliban wanted them there. Lots of countries closed their embassies, including Pakistan and even Switzerland. I don’t know the status of the Chinese, Russian or Iranian embassies. They weren’t mentioned in the WaPo article I read. On the status of UNICEF and the IRC, it was discussed in a CSIS panel.
Yeah? And just is going to bell that cat?
Every road out of Rome was also aroad into Rome. Shoot down any plane carrying Taliban “dignitaries” to the US.
That would be an extremely stupid move. If nothing else, it would allow you to collect DNA and find out nearest relatives. And then associates potentially.
Pie-in-the-sky. Words. Facts are on the news and have been for twenty years.
I don’t think you have accepted that *we lost*.
Just because a junta or a group take control of a country never means we have to or should recognize it or accede to its legitimacy.
Foreign or Domestic!
The PLO was designated as a terrorist organization by Act of Congress in 1987 (here).
Here’s the statement by an American President agreeing to negotiate with the PLO:
This was President Reagan’s statement on December 14, 1988. You can read the whole thing here.
So apparently, when President Reagan wanted to negotiate with terrorists, he just issued a statement accepting the terrorists’ claim that they were no longer terrorists. No problemo!
I was talking about international relations, but personally: either.
However Biden is our duly-elected President. He won by more than 15 billion votes, I believe. And Biden is the spitting image of Ronald Reagan as he appears today.
China, Russia. Iran and Pakistan have their embassies open in Kabul. I don’t think Pakistan’s even closed.
I was going to say, the West had 20 years in Afghanistan. If it didn’t destroy the Taliban it was because the price was too high.
This is a long interview with Dr Christine Fair, that lays out the contradictions that resulted in this ending rather brilliantly. As I said – quite long, but worth the effort. This who do not study history etc.
No one learns from history. If they did, there wouldn’t be so much of it.
That assumes that GWI was a success. I, for one, do not think it was, and it allowed the Powell Doctrine to hold sway as a result that lead to so much of our trouble in Afghanistan and Iraq. The military cannot just be use to kill people and break things. It MUST have a strategic and diplomatic purpose. Failing that purpose, it can never be used successfully. GWI lacked a victorious purpose. It’s goal (which we achieved), was to return to the Status Quo Ante Bellum, but that became evident before long as an inadequate solution. We had more of a purpose in GWII, but by the the military had decayed in part due to the general staff that saw Powell’s “success” as a blue print for their own and failed to learn how the military has been used to hold and control territory. In some of their defense, they saw Viet Nam as an example of how the Army and Marines aren’t good at that, but then again, other junior officers like Generals Petreus and McCrystal learned the exact opposite lessons from Viet Nam, so I don’t give them too much cover.
GWI was a success in that we returned the region to SQAB, but since we ended up there again a decade later fighting the same people its hard to really classify it as a success.
We never should have left, or better said, we never should have completely left. We had fewer troops in Afghanistan then we have in Germany. Its hard to find the data, but I think we had more troops die in Germany than in Afghanistan in the last 18-24 months. Our primary goals in Afghanistan had been met and were being met with a minimal expenditure of troops.
An interesting perspective. I disagree. I think that Gulf War I was a major success, ejecting Saddam from Kuwait, setting a precedent against such invasions, and seriously degrading his military power, while avoiding the tar pit of taking over Iraq.
Now if we were really clever, we would have normalized Saddam during the mid-1990s, and continued to use him as a counterweight to Iran. This is tough to do in a democracy, though, as you kinda had to demonize a guy like Saddam in order to get public support for the first war, and many people later object to dealing with such a monster.
Later edit — I was only responding to the part about Gulf War 1.
Because you had signed a deal with the Taliban that included an exit date you had no troops killed in Afghanistan during that period until the 13 killed by suicide bomber at the airport.
The Taliban did, however, continue to kill the Afghan Army in some numbers.
I agree. I assume you mean this on several levels, as you are one sharp cookie.
Just starting out, your comments merits many responses. Therefore:
I agree that the Powell Doctrine is absolute garbage. I confess that I did not always think so. This is the problem with pithy aphorisms — they appear witty even when they are stupid. Especially when they come from “our side.”
I propose replacing the Pottery Barn rule of “you break it — you bought it” with the universal rule of “it attacked me — I shot it.”
If a poop-hole country pulls off a spectacular attack, you don’t spend the next twenty years pumping sewage — you fill in the hole. With machinery. From a distance.