Investors.com//IBD Editorials  |  May 11, 2012

Freeing Taliban Like Freeing Al-Qaida Terrorists

Taliban fighters                                                          Photo: Creative Common/Courtesy: ibtimes.co.uk

War On Terror: Declassified bin Laden files reveal a close working relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban. They're in effect the same group. So why's the president freeing Taliban prisoners?

The documents, gathered in the raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, show he and his then-deputy Ayman Zawahiri discussed joint attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan with Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

Zawahiri is still alive today and presumably still helping direct Taliban operations against the U.S. as bin Laden's heir apparent. He and Omar are said to both be hiding inside Pakistan.

The high-level communications between al-Qaida and the Taliban is deeply problematic.

Contrary to the administration's claims, there is little daylight between the two groups in terms of both ideology and tactics. The administration has tried to separate the Taliban from al-Qaida, arguing it's not a terrorist threat and can be worked with diplomatically.

In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that a political settlement involving the Taliban is key to the stability of Afghanistan once the president withdraws U.S. combat troops by 2014.

As part of that settlement, the Washington Post reports that the administration has been secretly releasing captured Taliban fighters from an Afghan prison.

Some of these same fighters have killed American soldiers, likely in coordination with al-Qaida. So the administration might as well be freeing al-Qaida terrorists.

An unnamed U.S. official quoted in the Post piece says Obama's "strategic release" of high-level detainees is part of a bid to get the Taliban to agree to peace talks. Under the outrageous deal, the Taliban must promise to give up violence. But there is nothing to stop them from resuming attacks on our troops.

(What's odd is that at the same time the White House insists it will never negotiate with al-Qaida, it's all too willing to negotiate with al-Qaida's closest partner. A 70-year-old American aid worker kidnapped in Pakistan this week made a direct appeal to Obama via video to talk with al-Qaida to help save his life. The White House refused to even consider it.)

Publicly, the president talks tough on the Taliban. But privately, he has waved the white flag, begging for a truce while even promising to free the worst Taliban prisoners from Gitmo.

In fact, the commander in chief is deliberately misleading the public about the Taliban threat.

At March's joint White House press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Obama did not level with the American people when he claimed he has broken the back of the Taliban and stopped their forward momentum.

"What's undeniable," he claimed, "is that our forces are making very real progress: dismantling al-Qaida; breaking the Taliban's momentum; and training Afghan forces so that they can take the lead and our troops can come home."

He repeated the claim in his surprise trip to Kabul last week, during which he inked an exit pact with Afghan President Karzai: "Over the last three years, the tide has turned. We broke the Taliban's momentum."

On Sunday, the heads of both the Senate and House intelligence committees put the lie to his claim.

"I think we'd both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on CNN, while sitting with GOP Rep. Mike Rogers.

Discussing her own recent trip to Afghanistan, Feinstein pointed to a higher tempo of attacks by the Taliban, which has resulted in record U.S. casualties. She also warned that the Taliban's reach has spread well beyond the Pakistani border to every province in Afghanistan.

Obama vowed to "make sure the Taliban understand that they're not going to be able to regain momentum."

In fact, he is secretly helping the banned terror group make a miraculous comeback a decade after being driven out of the Afghan capital by the Bush administration.

Original article here.