Jimmy Carter - redux...

Belmont Club:

"Letting the Taliban gain capability on the basis of a promise not to attack the United States is like giving your enemy back his gun in exchange for an undertaking not to shoot you. It’s great if it works, but why would anyone think so? Well maybe someone does. More importantly, the remark attributed to the White House raises the question of how the President regards Iranian support for attacks on Iraq, Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel which actually resulted in a recent war, and whether Iranian proxies will in the future be off-limits once Teheran has acquired nuclear weapons. For a variety of reasons, resigning one’s self to watching the Taliban grow in strength and wistfully longing for them to be like the Hezbollah may be a bad metaphor. It certainly may be bad policy."