Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our gaffetastic Vice President is at it again, but this time I think he’s serious. The alleged ‘foreign policy’ expert in the Obama administration recently stated that, “The Taliban, per se, is not our enemy.” Jack Tapper with ABC News has the story:
The ongoing reconciliation process has long included bringing in forces who have taken up arms against the U.S. and against the Afghan government, but Biden might face criticism for stating that as an organization the Taliban is not the enemy of the U.S., when its leadership and members have devoted so much time, resources and energy towards killing American soldiers.
Republicans are already circulating the quote, noting that U.S. forces are still killing, and being killed by, Taliban fighters, trying to figure out how to use the quote given the reality that any peace in Afghanistan will by necessity likely need to include a brokered peace with Taliban forces.
In the wide-ranging interview, Biden talks about how Pakistan was able to live with a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which the U.S. would have been able to do had the Taliban stopped harboring al Qaeda. He asserts that the U.S. could have lived with the Taliban too, if that government had turned over al-Qaeda members.
Then the VP then turned to the reconciliation process, saying, “We are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet. Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.”
You can read the whole interview HERE.
Of course, why would a radical Islamic group that harbored al Qaeda members (including Osama bin Laden), banned television, banned education for women, imprisoned those whose beards were too short and who are constantly seeking to undermine U.S. interests in the region be a terrorist organization? Unfortunately for Vice President Biden, the State Department still considers the Pakistani branch of the Taliban a foreign terrorist organization, but somehow, they’re, “not our enemy, per se.”
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