I argued yesterday that it was way past time for Congress to amend the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force to reflect the current reality of the war by including the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban among the al Qaeda-allied forces that constitute the enemy. This prompted a note from my friend Fred Gedrich, who pointed out to me that the State Department won’t even designate these independent Taliban entities as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Here is the FTO list. No Taliban … even though we’ve been at war with the Afghan Taliban for nearly nine years. (About a year ago, Fred wrote an article for the New York Daily News calling for designation of the Taliban — so far, to no avail.)
So, if you can follow this, we’re in a war on terror against terrorist organizations that are killing and plotting to kill Americans but that our government won’t officially call terrorist organizations.
The “Continuity Irish Republican Army” is on the terrorism list … but not the Taliban.