By now it’s old news that Obama has hearted the Taliban.

President Obama is prepared to accept some Taleban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future and is unlikely to favour a large influx of new American troops being demanded by his ground commander, a senior official said last night.

Mr Obama appears to have been swayed in recent days by arguments from some advisers, led by Vice-President Joe Biden, that the Taleban do not pose a direct threat to the US and that there should be greater focus on tackling al-Qaeda inside Pakistan.

Mr Obama’s developing strategy on the Taleban will “not tolerate their return to power”, the senior official said. However, the US would only fight to keep the Taleban from retaking control of the central government — something the official said it is now far from capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary to al-Qaeda.

Bowing to the reality that the fundamentalist movement is too ingrained in national culture, the Administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taleban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said.

That could mean paving the way for insurgents willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government, and even ceding some regions of the country to the Taleban.

Mr Obama, the official said, is now inclined to send only as many more troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep al-Qaeda at bay. Downing Street said that the US President had discussed Afghanistan with Gordon Brown yesterday during a 40-minute video conference call.

Sending far fewer troops than the 40,000 being demanded by General Stanley McChrystal would mean that Mr Obama is willing to ignore the wishes of his ground commander.

General McChrystal, along with the US military’s other top officials, insist that only a classic, well-resourced counter-insurgency strategy has a chance of staving off defeat in Afghanistan. Losing the war, they further argue, would provide al-Qaeda with new safe havens from which to mount attacks on the US and elsewhere.

After two days of meetings in the White House Situation Room with his war Cabinet, Mr Obama, according to the official, kept returning to one central question: who is our adversary?

The answer was, repeatedly, al-Qaeda, with advisers arguing that the terror network was distinct from the Taleban and that the US military was fighting the Taleban even though it posed no direct threat to America.

Ah.  And there is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?  An unstated assumption, it is.  The Taliban pose no direct threat to America, or in other words, they won’t harbor al Qaeda in the future.  They aren’t globalists, and they won’t befriend those who would be globalists or who would participate in the transnational insurgency they call jihad.

Well, I have argued that the burden of proof is on those who claim that the Taliban are no threat at all since they have proven otherwise in their history.  I have further argued that their claims to being innocuous are dubious given their previous devotion to AQ and their recent statements.

But putting that issue aside for a moment, there is something very troubling that stands out in this report.  The administration has elsewhere argued that AQ is primarily (or completely) in Pakistan and is preparing to focus major assets and attention on the Pakistani effort at routing AQ.  They have now signed on to the notion that the Taliban won’t harbor AQ and are even prepared to offer them a place in the seat of government.

Yet instead of sending McChrystal his requested troops for the campaign, they are preparing to send only those troops needed to “keep AQ at bay.”  Keep them at bay where?  In Afghanistan?  But we’ve signed on to the notion that the Taliban will route them from Afghanistan, not harbor them.  If this is true, then not only will no more troops be needed, the ones currently there can come home.  The Taliban can combine with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to do our work for us.

Alas, it is such simple logic, and it’s sad that the administration couldn’t see through the greatest weakness of its own argument.  They don’t even believe it.