McChrystal: There's Been Enough Fighting

Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he’s pushing towards a negotiated peace with the Taliban, using his newly-expanded forces to weaken their bargaining position. “As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” the NATO commander in Afghanistan tells the Financial Times. “What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.”

McChrystal says the new troops will create a stretch of secure territory between Kabul and the Taliban territory in the south, weakening the insurgency enough that it’ll come to the bargaining table. Asked if he’d be okay with seeing Taliban leaders within the government, McChrystal replied, “I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future.” That echoes Robert Gates’ recent remark that the Taliban is part of Afghanistan’s “political fabric.” (More Stanley McChrystal stories.)