I read through them; thanks for pulling this all together.
My point remains at least in my mind. First, that Taliban policies of going after civilians isn’t new, they’ve been killing them right and left since the beginning when they can get to them, and they’ve also been using them to bargain for the release of Talibs from the beginning. So for this guy to announce that they are going to “start” doing it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Secondly, this follows on the heels of Obama’s decision to release the prisoners anyway. They can’t allow that, they have to take some action to make it look like the US is releasing them under duress. So again, I wouldn’t take the pretext too seriously.
Thirdly, there was an advantage to not revealing the identities of the terrorists we had in custody for this very reason. If they don’t know who you have, they can’t kidnap people and demand their release. You release them when you are done with them, on your terms.
We are up against people who are adept at using the news media for their own purposes; this is a chess game in addition to a boxing match.
The basic assumption of the editorial I have to reject. They aren’t fighting us because we detain them, we detain them because they are fighting us. The failure to distinguish between fighter and civilian isn’t on our side, the fact is that all their fighters are civilians and they move among civilians, use civilians for intel, for weapons caches, their entire support system is civilian. So the complaint that somehow we are scooping up civilians among our detainees is spurious I think. The whole problem of detentions is the need to sort out the civilians who are aiding the enemy from the civilians who are not. And among the civilians aiding the enemy, which ones cooperate because they have to versus the ones who actually carry rifles and are active members. That has to be sorted out. There is no other way to fight a war of this nature.
I agree.