Catastrophe - Dick Morris [63]
But the newspaper points out that many experts say that “any kind of Talibanism is dangerous.”227
They point out that, good or bad, all Talibs who demand the enforcement of Shariah invoke a variant of Islam that also calls for Islamic domination by global jihad. Besides, to accept the “good” Taliban theory is to write off the rights of Muslim women, allow public stoning and summary executions.
These experts feel that this romantic project to isolate and eliminate the worst of the worst, is a slippery slope that would amount to conceding ground to Islamic forces that, sooner or later, and at a time of their choice, would seek to impose their ultra conservatism on the world by jihad.228
When the hard-line cleric Sufi Muhammad, who negotiated the deal for the Taliban, returned to the Swat valley, the Associated Press reports, he “received a hero’s welcome there by crowds shouting ‘Long live Islam!’”229 Of course he did.
NATO, which has 55,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan, was less than pleased with the decision. The truce “is certainly reason for concern,” noted NATO spokesman James Appathurai. “We should all be concerned by a situation in which extremists would have a safe haven…it is clear that the [Swat valley] region is suffering very badly from extremists and we would not want it to get worse.”230
Yet President Obama said and did nothing to change the situation. All Secretary of State Clinton would say was that “the agreement still needed to be ‘thoroughly understood.’”231 The Obama administration seems unwilling even to criticize the Taliban in public. Apparently surrender is just fine with it.
Now, exploiting its gains, the Taliban is increasingly posing a serious military threat to the Pakistani government. That it would do so was, of course, predictable. Once the Pakistani government gave them, in effect, a safe haven near the Afghan border, their further military advance was inevitable.
Yet even more disturbing than President Obama’s policies are the people he has appointed to administer them.
Let’s begin with Eric Holder, Jr., the new U.S. attorney general. Holder was instrumental in persuading President Clinton to pardon a group of FALN terrorists in 2000. The Los Angeles Times reports that Holder “repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations.”232 The paper notes that “angry lawmakers demanded to know why the Justice Department had not sided with the FBI, federal prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials who were vehemently opposed to the grants [of clemency].”233
The Times reported that Holder “instructed his staff…to effectively replace the [Justice] Department’s original report recommending against any commutations…with one that favored clemency for at least half of the prisoners.”234
Later, the pardon attorney at the Clinton Justice Department, Roger Adams, commented on the incident. “I remember this [episode] well,” he said, “because it was such a big deal to consider clemency for a group of people convicted of such heinous crimes.”235 Adams said he told Holder of his “strong opposition to any clemency in several internal memos and a draft report recommending denial.”236 But Holder would not take no for an answer. What makes the whole episode even more reprehensible is that the terrorists had not even applied for pardons. Clinton and Holder simply decided to respond to pressure from outside groups that were advocating their release.
The sixteen FALN members pardoned at Holder’s urging had been convicted of bank robbery,