Tequila:

I would like to add two things to your arguments. At least I hope they will add.

The first one is I think advocates of negotiations forget that the Taliban are totalitarians. That word has gone out of fashion but that is what they are. The history of the 20th century shows that totalitarians don't negotiate anything but the surrender of their targets. This is important.

Second, if I were the Pak Army/ISI/Taliban & company, I would find it very advantageous to start negotiations. It would open up another front against the US. Lots of people would expect negotiations to produce results...fast. The only people who could give something to produce fast results would be us and some of our people would push very hard for us to do just that; and force various Afghan segments to give whether they wanted to or not. We would be opening this new front against us, ourselves.

I have question for you and anybody else. Do you think Americans and American military culture has reached the point where we put the same blind, gullible faith in SpecOps to solve all problems that we have in technology to solve all problems? It is almost as if they are viewed as biological machines that will do it all. That is something that strikes me when I see us clinging to night raids even when many people who know the area say they don't work.