“Taliban” on The Daily Caller

During his recent speech in Kabul, President Obama sought to close the door on Afghanistan as an election-year issue. He congratulated the troops, hailed the progress that’s been made due to his leadership, and reiterated his promise to withdraw most troops by 2014. As the president got on Air Force One, the message was clear: You won’t be hearing much else from me on Afghanistan (except, perhaps, to tout the death of Osama bin Laden). (more)

KABUL –  The US has been secretly releasing captured Taliban fighters from a detention center in Afghanistan in a bid to strengthen its hand in peace talks with the insurgent group, the Washington Post reported Monday. (more)

President Barack Obama has promised not to attack Pakistan-based al-Qaida leaders or fighters from bases inside Afghanistan. (more)

White House officials are using optimistic and assertive language to frame their unconditional withdrawal from the Afghanistan war as a positive achievement, amid a continued offensive by the Taliban and their ideological soulmates in al-Qaida. (more)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide car bomber and Taliban militants disguised in burqas attacked a compound housing hundreds of foreigners in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, officials and witnesses said. The Taliban said the attack was a response to President Barack Obama’s surprise visit just hours earlier. (more)

Responding to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai‘s demand that the U.S. military leave the country’s village outposts by next year, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said the U.S. will not “abandon” Afghanistan. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says he will not approve the release of any Taliban from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison as part of Afghan peace talks unless he’s sure they won’t return to the battlefield. (more)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A newly assertive Supreme Court is taking on the Pakistani government and army in a series of high-profile cases, signaling a power shift in a country vital to U.S. efforts to fight Islamist militants and negotiate peace in Afghanistan. (more)

As much as Congressman Ron Paul may enjoy ascribing the “neo-con” badge of shame to his hawkish opponents, he risked earning himself the demagogic “neo-lib” tag with his reply to a November presidential debate question on foreign aid: “We should export maybe some principles about free markets and sound money, and maybe they could produce some of their own wealth.” This is refreshing advice, yet unfortunately when it comes to applying it where it would save the most American lives — i.e., Afghanistan — many Ron Paulites and classical liberals seem more concerned with distancing themselves from “neo-con” nation-building than following Milton Friedman’s lead of pro-actively teaching the world to fish. Indeed, while ending the war on drugs was a top priority for Friedman in his final years, the political calculations of his acolytes remain a key hindrance to rethinking the prohibition of Afghanistan’s most lucrative resource. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The No. 2 U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that U.S. military advisory teams will start deploying to Afghanistan this year to help Afghan combat forces as they take a more prominent role in fighting the Taliban. (more)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban dismissed reports they are preparing to talk peace with the Afghan government, and a NATO report leaked Wednesday shows captured insurgents full of confidence they will seize power after international troops leave. (more)

The White House is hoping to end its ten year old war with the Taliban in Afghanistan through a political settlement. Let us all pray that the negotiations will be successful. It is past time to get our soldiers out of there. But as with most things in the Middle East, there is a little “catch” that complicates things and makes pulling out our troops hard to do. It is hard because the war didn’t start with political maneuvering. It started with the blowing up of the twin World Trade Center Towers in Manhattan. The war came in with a loud bang; it is unlikely to go out with a whimper. (more)

When a YouTube video featuring Marines urinating on Taliban corpses surfaced earlier this month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta responded quickly and clearly: “I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” The directness contrasted with the more indefinite conclusion of an eight-month Air Force investigation into the motive of an Afghan pilot who killed eight of his U.S. Air Force mentors in a suicidal shooting spree at Kabul International Airport (KIA) last April. The report found that shooter Ahmad Gul — who spent 18 months at a fundamentalist mosque in Pakistan before recently returning to Afghanistan because he “wanted to kill Americans” — prayed all night before the attack at his pro-Pakistan Kabul mosque and shouted in between shots for “good Muslims [to] please stay away.” Yet even with the writing seemingly on the wall — indeed, he wrote “Allah is one” on a wall with his blood and died of his self-inflicted wounds chanting “Allah, Allah” — the report found no conclusive motive. It did, however, partially rule out one: “none of the co-workers believed subject was a religious radical.” (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving ahead with plans for negotiating with the Taliban, confident that talks offer the best chance to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. But the military worries things are moving too fast, and intelligence agencies offered a gloomy prognosis in their latest Afghanistan report. (more)

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing of a Voice of America journalist in Pakistan Wednesday, The New York Times reported. (more)

In an appearance on “Imus in the Morning” on the Fox Business Network, former Navy SEAL officer Leif Babin criticized the reaction to a video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban, pointing out that the media focuses on that while ignoring the sacrifices of fallen soldiers. (more)

The video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers that surfaced last week has sparked its share of outrage. However, it is the Obama administration’s reaction that has Texas Gov. Rick Perry concerned. (more)

American commentators, public officials and the Taliban expressed outrage over a video that appeared last week showing U.S. Marines urinating on the dead corpses of enemy Taliban combatants. But was the act any worse than killing Taliban fighters with drone strikes? (more)

International outrage over a video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters consumed media coverage Friday. Some conservatives cheered the Marines for showing such profound disrespect to the dead insurgents, while many on the political left demanded more forceful condemnation. (more)

Our so-called mainstream media have launched a new anti-military feeding frenzy. The furor is over a crude 39-second video showing four Marines apparently urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban combatants. In hysteric rhetoric akin to “news reports” on the 2004 Abu Ghraib photos, hordes of print and broadcast “correspondents” rushed to describe the viral video, which surfaced Jan. 11, as evidence of an “atrocity” and “desecration” that reflects the “depravity” of our military in general and the U.S. Marines in particular. As usual, the effort to denigrate our armed forces means that the potentates of the press ignored far more important stories. (more)