The Taliban (students, in the Afghan language) want us dead.
They are in effect death cultists, and they are completely happy to kill and kill and kill.
The fact that they are ingrates and spoiled and liars and corrupt, both personally and communally, is almost beside the point. the point is, they are not really negotiating at all: the only seek pretext for advantages to do what they most want to do: kill us.
We cannot end terrorism, but we can sufficiently dismember and disrupt this cult that it is no longer capable of international scope.
We can influence Afghan society to rebuild based on human rights and commerce and democratic ideals, which will completely counteract the venom of this cult.
That is what we must do: wage both war and peace.
Ed

Ed