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Afghanistan: accommodating the Taliban

With a frankness rare in American presidential pronouncements, Barack Obama has answered the question whether NATO is winning its war in Afghanistan with a categorical "No", and said the United States will now seek to accommodate the "moderate elements" of the Taliban. He could have fudged facts and said that all kinds of "progress" were being made, that NATO was in the process of "turning" the war and so on, but one of his virtues is evidently straight-talking. From his point of view, he cannot be expected to defend wars his administration did not start and with which he never agreed. A democratic change of government in Washington properly entails changes in high policy, particularly given the polarised positions adopted by each side in last year's Presidential campaign. Many in the military would argue that nothing needs changing like American and NATO policy with regard to Afghanistan, where the government is riddled with corruption and roads become unsafe from the enemy a few kilometres out of Kabul.

Some of the more traditional conservatives in America, like Patrick Buchanan, will welcome the changes in foreign policy now in the offing in Washington, for Republicans were traditionally the party that argued against too much involvement beyond the Americas (compare American foreign policy under Eisenhower, who...

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