Not catching bin Laden, legitimizing Taliban = Bush’s response to 9/11

When the takeover of Iraq started to spiral out of control, the joke that the U.S. would be better off returning Saddam Hussein back to power started making the rounds.

Now, with Afghanistan reaping the violence and chaos that comes from George W. Bush’s half-assed effort to clear out the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks, rumors are swirling that the Taliban may be being given a chance to come in from the cold:

LONDON, England (CNN) — Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with the Afghan government to end the country’s bloody conflict — and are severing their ties with al Qaeda, sources close to the historic discussions have told CNN.
King Abdullah of Saudia Arabia hosted meetings between the Afghan government and the Taliban, a source says.

The militia, which has been intensifying its attacks on the U.S.-led coalition that toppled it from power in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, has been involved in four days of talks hosted by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, says the source.

The talks — the first of their kind aimed at resolving the lengthy conflict in Afghanistan — mark a significant move by the Saudi leadership to take a direct role in Afghanistan, hosting delegates who have until recently been their enemies.

They also mark a sidestepping of key “war on terror” ally Pakistan, frequently accused of not doing enough to tackle militants sheltering on its territory, which has previously been a conduit for talks between the Saudis and Afghanistan.

According to the source, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar — high on the U.S. military’s most-wanted list — was not present, but his representatives were keen to stress the reclusive cleric is no longer allied to al Qaeda.

Details of the Taliban leader’s split with al Qaeda have never been made public before, but the new claims confirm what another source with an intimate knowledge of the militia and Mullah Omar has told CNN in the past.

The current round of talks, said to have been taken two years of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations to come to fruition, is anticipated to be the first step in a long process to secure a negotiated end to the conflict.

If all this is true, it means that seven years after 9/11, here’s what George W. Bush will have accomplished in his War on Terror: Osama bin Laden has never been caught, his old friends the Taliban could be legitimized, and the world is a more dangerous place.

–WKW

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