Thursday, May 04, 2006

Tattletaling on the Taliban

I'm going to stay after class and tell Ms. Condi that the Taliban, espcially with their more recent changes in operational style, are...umm...terrorists by any (of the many) standards the current administration has employed. They've killed civilians for political purposes.

In trying to improve my foot speed to dodge bullets when I'm kidnapped and my Taliban captors are shooting at my feet making me dance the jig for their own entertainment, I was looking up Salsa steps and came across this. At least the Taliban will be playing some hip-shaking rhythms for me.

The Taliban aren't terrorists. See, the State Dept. seems to think such.

"In the latest State Department report last Friday, one item went unnoticed by the press, until now: the US doesn't classify the Taliban as terrorists -- and haven't for the last six years.

The find was made by CSMonitor.com's Tom Regan. The US does classify other groups on the US hit list as terrorists -- such as Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Hamas."


Though I'm not expecting consistency on this front. I'm not consistent in my own "definition" of "terrorism" or "terrorists". I don't believe it's even appropriate in foreign relations. But come on now, 6 years running? All the while, as iocaste212 points out here, the Earth Liberation Front gets tried under domestic terrorism laws and put on the DHS terrorist list?

I can see why before 9/11 the Taliban weren't put on the terrorist list. Largely, they weren't on our radar as national security threat. And the Clinton and Bush administrations had other political/economic motivations to engage with them. So is the current reason for leaving them off the list simply to justify the current administration's view that Afghanistan is a decreasing threat to US national security? That we've won the "war on terrorism" here? That we can pull our combat troops out of the southern parts of this country and put in NATO troops with more restrictive rules of engagement?

I'm gonna go watch that Colbert bit again.

4 comments:

Shannon said...

Argh! I wasn't able to watch the Colbert video before youtube took it down!

Anonymous said...

Did you hear my head explode? Because it surely was loud enough to be heard half a world away.

::mutters:: stupid state department stupid not terrorists my ample white behind stupid stupid.

quasim said...

Shannon,
I can't seem to find it posted anywhere else. Any luck? I just don't want to link to the transcript either.

Ms. D,
Heh...silly me. I thought that sound was a rocket attack from those silly not-terrorists. All it was was your head?...maybe I should give Condi the benifit of the doubt..

quasim said...

You know E, Colbert was right. We're looking at these "facts," these things the media "reports." Thats our problem! Like him, we need to go with our guts. And my gut tells me that any man who keeps his beard long is a man's man (maybe even...well nevermind). And they got nice rugs. Beards and rugs, if there is anything that is not terrorist, it's those two things.

On a serious note, theory two seems to be coming to a head. I haven't found much news recently on Balochistan, especially after the pipeline news (assuming that it's gonna cross through B-stan). But if the General can't control that area, and ensure the pipeline goes through, I'm wondering if the US will continue to support him.