New Taliban Leader, no peace, no way, no talks. More War.
A week ago, and I remember seeing the threads here, but can't for the life of me remember who, and I remember being rather busy, and thinking of posting a reply, but alas I never did.
Anyway, a week ago, the US killed a Taliban Leader the day before he was due to start moving towards a meeting with the Pakistani Government about the idea of Peace. It's possible that the meeting would have gone nowhere. But there is an old Diplomatic axiom that says Jaw Jaw is better than War War. In other words, it's better to be talking, even if it seems pointless, than fighting a war. The drone strike is covered in this news article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24787637
In short, we blasted the Taliban Leader who was at least willing to talk, and on the surface seemed willing to consider peace.
Now, it's been a week, and there is a new Taliban Leader. He says that there will be no peace. There will be more war, and there will be stepped up attacks against the Government for this betrayal in which the leader Hakimullah Mehsud will be avenged.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24861008
Now, I am not naive enough to say that this fellow Mullah Fazlullah would have embraced peace if it had come due to negotiations with Hakimulla Mehsud. At best he would have grudgingly accepted it and looked for ways to show it wasn't working. But that chance is gone because we went to Pakistan with a Drone, found one of our targets, and fired a missile that ended his life. Yay team. High fives all around, we got the target, positively identified, probably through NSA tapping of the phones and voice recognition. We just didn't bother to see if it would perhaps be cool with the Pakistani's to do this. Well, they'll do what they're told, because we're the United States. So negotiations for peace are out, and who can blame them. If you give your enemy only one option, victory or death, there is no choice but to fight for victory.
So now Drone Strikes are not only illegal http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-illegality-illegitimacy-and-immorality-of-u-s-drone-strikes/5356886
But they are also destroying any chance of a negotiated peace. So does anyone have any ideas on how to actually defeat extremist terrorism? Because so far, it doesn't look like we're winning, and a negotiated peace may have been our best chance.
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