WHA-A-A-T???!!

QALAT, Afghanistan - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

That would be if we define "successful" as "having given up our attempt to defeat the third-world Islamist movement that provided sanctuary and support to the people who destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon on 9/11." Or maybe "Representing to the world that the United States actually is a corrupt and completely ineffectual paper tiger, just as Osama says, and the best we can do with terrorists who attacked us (aside from using their name as a slogan for throwing people into Gitmo) is allow them to be part of some kind of struggling coalition government that is nominally democratic, like say, Hamas or Hezbollah."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won."

It's October, right? This isn't some April Fools' prank? Bill Frist, Mr. Republican Apparatchik 2005, diagnoser of Terri Schiavo, and oft-time weilder of the mighty sword 'Cut-and-Run', is actually suggesting we let the Taliban win?

Has the SEC investgation driven him insane? Did someone forget to remind him to wait until after the mid-terms to crank up his Presidential campaign? Are the House Republican leaders in such a panic that they begged Frist to take a little of the heat off them? What the heck is going on?

The saddest thing is that, for once, Frist may be telling the truth. Though if so, it's a truth that probably wasn't true before we took our eye off Afghanistan, and failed to follow our overthrow of the Taliban with a development effort to rival any in history. Who knows where Afghanistan might be today if we'd spent the treasure we've squandered in Iraq on finishing the job?

I'm curious to hear what Mr. Frist thinks about Iraq, especially following the recent polls saying that most Iraqis would like us out of their country. Now that Bill thinks that a widespread insurgency with popular support can't be defeated militarily, and all.

Of course, Frist may still be overly optimistic: why would the Taliban settle for just being part of a government when they had the whole thing, before?

Update: Phew! That's better. For a second I was feeling the world spin out of control.

I’m currently overseas visiting our troops in Afghanistan, but I wanted to take a moment to address an Associated Press story titled, “Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov’t.” The story badly distorts my remarks and takes them out of context.

First of all, let me make something clear: The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists who’ve oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. America’s overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.

Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.

National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority … but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into Afghanistan’s government.

Written by Bill Frist, M.D.