In my post Musharraf Unhinged, I cited reports that Musharraf is asking for help in Pakistan, and that there is strong political pressure to bring the Taliban into politics as a remedy for the violence that has overtaken the Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan.  In a statement apparently designed to parrot Musharraf’s position, Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist has encouraged the same:

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

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

“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.”

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not “out of the question” but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.

“A political solution is how it’s all going to be solved,” he said.

At the Counterterrorism Blog (and also in the Boston Globe), Lorenzo Vidino has the following salient comments concerning democracy in Muslim world:

IN RECENT WEEKS, President Bush has delivered a series of major speeches outlining his strategy against terrorism. We have come a long way from the nebulous rhetoric of the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

The foe is no longer defined as “terror,” which is simply a tool used by a well-defined adversary. The new “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” acknowledges that America’s enemy is a “transnational movement of extremist organizations . . . which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.” The report then outlines measures to confront that challenge. While short-term measures such as denying terrorists sanctuary or tracking their funds seem logical , the administration’s long-term strategy is less straightforward.

The obvious cure to the problem is tackling radical Islam, the ideology that motivates terrorists. But the administration believes firmly — almost blindly — that democracy is the right medicine. According to the report, democracy “diminishes the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit.” Promotion of democracy is, therefore, the key element in the administration’s long-term approach.

Yet democracy does not always have these healing powers. The administration contends that individuals who enjoy political participation and can freely express themselves are less likely to embrace fundamentalist messages. The truth is that today democratic societies are spawning terrorists no less than dictatorships are.

Continuing with the recent mantra, Musharraf adds to the political blitz by saying:

“They don’t know the realities on (the) ground. They’re not conscious of the reality I’m seeing – the extreme danger of this becoming a people’s movement.”

Frist was clearly referring to the Taliban (rather than the Pashtun tribes), as he told us this directly.  Mushaffar is implying that the Talibanization of the tribes will occur if the Taliban are not brought directly into the political process.

So the logic is as follows:

1. The enemy attacked the U.S. on 9/11 when they were in complete control and responsible charge of the government of Afghanistan.
2. Being in complete control of the government, there was no possibility that the Taliban were under-represented or disenfranchised, so this could not have been the reason or even a catalyst for their attack on the U.S.
3. We have fought the enemy, and he has been driven out but not defeated.
4. The enemy is too numerous and enjoys some degree of political support, and thus they cannot be defeated.
5. The solution to our failure to defeat the enemy is to give the Taliban some power in the political process so that they won’t be disenfranshised; for if they are disenfranchised, they might continue to attack us.

So there you have it.