Is the public getting a snow job from the Obama Administration, or is Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) chasing windmills? Unfortunately, we will probably learn the answers several years from now when it is much too late to do anything about it.
In general, the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government does not have a very good track record of transparency, or even honesty, when it comes to foreign affairs. That dismal record gets even worse when military action is involved. On the other hand, Rep. Rohrabacher isn’t exactly known for his mild mannered speech, subtlety, or some might even say objectivity, when it comes to criticizing the Obama Administration. At OC180NEWS, we try not to take sides on issues like this, but we do believe this is one where reasonably informed adults should have at least a basic understanding.
The issue of negotiations with the Taliban really heated up when Rohrabacher led a bipartisan group of four U.S. Representatives to Berlin for a meeting with a group representing opposition to the Afghanistan Government of President Karzai. In addition to Rohrabacher, The group of U.S. Representatives included Orange County’s only Democrat Representative, Loretta Sanchez.
(See related article below.)
While Rohrabacher has continued to make noise about the Taliban negotiations, Rep. Sanchez has been quiet on the issue. After she returned from the Berlin meeting, we attempted to get a statement from her, but that effort was not successful.
Meanwhile, Rohrabacher has gone so far as to put forward a sense of the House resolution which would give a big thumbs down to the Administration’s Taliban negotiations. Rohrabacher also strongly condemned Ambassador to Afghanistan Crocker’s recent comments about U.S. goals in that country. Then yesterday, Rohrabacher continued his offensive with another statement on his view on current Taliban negotiations.
Rep. Rohrabacher’s January 30, statement is predicated on his conclusion that the United States is close to a deal for the release of five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison.
“The Taliban is a terrorist organization responsible for the death and maiming of hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan, and were in league with al-Qaida when 3,000 people were murdered in the U.S. on 9/11,” said Rohrabacher. “While President Obama refuses to talk to America’s natural allies in Afghanistan, the Northern Front, he is in the process of making one-sided concessions to the Taliban that will put some of its worst killers back in action.”
In response to Rohrabacher statement yesterday, OC180NEWS consulted the State Department’s Daily Press Briefing which is conducted by Spokesperson Victoria Nuland. These regular briefings provide the Washington DC State Department press corps opportunities to ask about whatever is on their minds. It is also noteworthy that yesterday’s briefing was conducted after Rohrabacher’s statement was released.
While none of the reporters at the State Department asked directly about Rohrabacher’s statement, there was some hint of these issues.
Spokesperson Nuland was asked Specifically about negotiations for the release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison, which is at the heart of Rohrabacher’s statement. But, even the wording of the question from the reporter ran contrary to Rohrabacher’s assertion of “weekend reports that the United States is close to a deal for the release of five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison.”
From the State Department 01/30/2012 Daily Briefing transcript:
“QUESTION: Okay. And just this morning there were a couple of reports saying that this round of negotiation with Taliban has fallen through because there is a deadlock on the release of prisoners from Guantanamo. Can you confirm or deny that?
MS. NULAND: We talked about this a number of times in that last week. We are not going to get into the back and forth about how this is going. We’re not going to be giving full details. We need to provide some space to work through these issues.”
Earlier in yesterday’s briefing Ms. Nuland answered a question about the idea of a Taliban office in Qatar.
“The focus of the conversation now is on whether it would make sense in the context of a larger Afghan-Afghan process of reconciliation for the Taliban to have an office in Qatar,” said Spokesperson Nuland. “This is an issue that has not been decided, and the consultations continue on it.”
So that is about as close as we are going to get for now to a response from the Obama Administration to Rohrabacher statement. The full text of his January 30, 2012 statement follows:
Washington, D.C. – In response to weekend reports that the United States is close to a deal for the release of five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison, Rep. Rohrabacher issued the following statement:
“The Taliban is a terrorist organization responsible for the death and maiming of hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan, and were in league with al-Qaida when 3,000 people were murdered in the U.S. on 9/11,” said Rohrabacher. “While President Obama refuses to talk to America’s natural allies in Afghanistan, the Northern Front, he is in the process of making one-sided concessions to the Taliban that will put some of its worst killers back in action.”
Earlier this month, Rep. Rohrabacher led a bipartisan congressional delegation meeting with National Front leaders in Berlin to discuss alternatives to Obama’s and Karzai’s idea of including the Taliban in an Afghanistan coalition government. The Obama Administration and the State Department furiously opposed this dialogue between Members of Congress and Afghan leaders who believe in a more democratic, federal government system in Afghanistan. The Taliban itself even issued a statement on January 17th threatening those who took part in the conference for the mere fact of discussing parliamentary forms of government.
“President Obama is negotiating with the Taliban from a position of provocative weakness, accepting their preconditions to release some of the Taliban’s top terrorist plotters to resume their work without anything in return,” Rohrabacher continued. “As Obama is busy making unilateral concessions to America’s enemies in Afghanistan, the Taliban responded on January 25th by releasing a press statement that said, ‘The democratic system is a kufr system of government, be it presidential or parliamentary, centralized or federal, because this system comes from humans… democracy has been a cause of wars and crisis.’
“The Taliban reject any form of political freedom and refuses any compromise of their Islamist beliefs. The Taliban show no signs of being ready for serious peace talks. They are, however, ready to accept US concessions that will rebuild and strengthen their leadership for the ongoing war, which we should NOT do.”
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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