Some in the Obama administration are desperate to jumpstart peace negotiations with the Taliban in advance of NATO’s summit in Chicago next month.

To date, those negotiations have gone nowhere. The Taliban has outright rejected the administration’s goals for the talks. An effort to send the five most senior Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo to Qatar, where the Taliban has opened a political office, ran into a number of roadblocks. The dangers posed by the Taliban five concern even top Democrats, who openly question the administration’s effort to transfer them. And Qatar, a top fundraising hub for the Taliban and al Qaeda, would not agree to keep the Taliban five in custody once they were transferred out of American hands. These are just some of the problems the Obama administration has encountered.