Bret Stephens: Talking to the Enemy
[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs, which runs every Tuesday in the U.S. and is also published in the European and Asian editions of the paper. He is a member of the Journal's editorial board, and has previously worked for the paper as an assistant editorial features (op-ed) editor in New York and as an editorial writer in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal Europe.]
It is the declared policy of the Obama administration that the United States should talk to enemies as well as friends. So why not talk to al Qaeda?
It's not as if al Qaeda isn't willing to deal. "Whether America escalates or de-escalates this conflict, we will reply in kind," Osama bin Laden said in 2002. Bin Laden renewed his offer in 2006, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri made it again in a videotaped message released earlier this month: "The mujahadeen have opened the door for the West to turn a new leaf," he said. "But the [Westerners] insist on relations that are based on oppressing us."
Nor is it as if there aren't serious people in the West willing to entertain al Qaeda's offer. "If I was in government now, I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban, and I would want to find a channel to al Qaeda," Jonathan Powell, formerly Tony Blair's chief of staff, told the Guardian newspaper last year. Seconding that view was U.K. Security Minister Alan West, a former First Sea Lord, who said not talking to al Qaeda was "silly."
But aren't al Qaeda's demands outrageous, and nonnegotiable to boot? In his message, Zawahiri ticked them off as follows: "Withdrawing the infidel forces from all Muslim lands, stopping the theft of the Muslims' wealth by the threat of military force, conducting [economic] exchange at real, fair prices, stopping the support for the corrupt, apostate regimes in the Islamic world, releasing all Muslim prisoners, and stopping the interference in the affairs of the Islamic world."
Missing from this list are previous demands of the West to withdraw its support for Israel. Maybe that's an oversight, or maybe it's a concession. Either way, it's in the nature of most negotiations that the parties to them begin with extreme demands and then, through give-and-take, move toward accommodation. Why should al Qaeda be any different?
Why, too, should al Qaeda be in a separate category from, say, North Korea, which the administration seems willing to court once again? The answer cannot be that we are at war with the former but not the latter: The U.S. is also technically at war with North Korea, which in May declared the 1953 armistice null and void.
It's equally hard to make the case that, as a terrorist group, al Qaeda is beyond the pale of negotiations, when the administration is eager to negotiate with Iran and Syria, both designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. Even less persuasive is the argument that al Qaeda inhabits some unique sphere of evil. Next to Kim Jong Il, bin Laden is a piker in the atrocities department.
So then, why don't we talk to al Qaeda?...
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
It is the declared policy of the Obama administration that the United States should talk to enemies as well as friends. So why not talk to al Qaeda?
It's not as if al Qaeda isn't willing to deal. "Whether America escalates or de-escalates this conflict, we will reply in kind," Osama bin Laden said in 2002. Bin Laden renewed his offer in 2006, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri made it again in a videotaped message released earlier this month: "The mujahadeen have opened the door for the West to turn a new leaf," he said. "But the [Westerners] insist on relations that are based on oppressing us."
Nor is it as if there aren't serious people in the West willing to entertain al Qaeda's offer. "If I was in government now, I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban, and I would want to find a channel to al Qaeda," Jonathan Powell, formerly Tony Blair's chief of staff, told the Guardian newspaper last year. Seconding that view was U.K. Security Minister Alan West, a former First Sea Lord, who said not talking to al Qaeda was "silly."
But aren't al Qaeda's demands outrageous, and nonnegotiable to boot? In his message, Zawahiri ticked them off as follows: "Withdrawing the infidel forces from all Muslim lands, stopping the theft of the Muslims' wealth by the threat of military force, conducting [economic] exchange at real, fair prices, stopping the support for the corrupt, apostate regimes in the Islamic world, releasing all Muslim prisoners, and stopping the interference in the affairs of the Islamic world."
Missing from this list are previous demands of the West to withdraw its support for Israel. Maybe that's an oversight, or maybe it's a concession. Either way, it's in the nature of most negotiations that the parties to them begin with extreme demands and then, through give-and-take, move toward accommodation. Why should al Qaeda be any different?
Why, too, should al Qaeda be in a separate category from, say, North Korea, which the administration seems willing to court once again? The answer cannot be that we are at war with the former but not the latter: The U.S. is also technically at war with North Korea, which in May declared the 1953 armistice null and void.
It's equally hard to make the case that, as a terrorist group, al Qaeda is beyond the pale of negotiations, when the administration is eager to negotiate with Iran and Syria, both designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. Even less persuasive is the argument that al Qaeda inhabits some unique sphere of evil. Next to Kim Jong Il, bin Laden is a piker in the atrocities department.
So then, why don't we talk to al Qaeda?...