Negotiating with the Taliban

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

In a perfect world (from the American nationalistic point-of-view) we would never have to negotiate with anyone. We would just express our wishes and all others would rush to obey. Alas, we in fact do not enjoy that level of cooperation from foreigners.

So, in this imperfect world, we must make hard choices. In this case, we could negotiate with the Taliban, thus according them some level of legitimacy, but getting our soldier returned. Or we could withhold that increment of legitimacy, dealing either a slight or a great blow to their cause (who can say?), but leaving our soldier to his fate.

Why do I have the feeling that whichever course the President had followed, Whell would be on here claiming it was blatantly the wrong thing to do?

Reckon he would also be the one to suggest that we did all the right things in Iran, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Chile, The Philippines and Vietnam. Even though history has shown that virtually all of the geopolitical trouble we've had over the last 50 years has been our own doing.