It used to be that a murderous regime needed a pliable Western journalist to get its propaganda printed in the New York Times.
Not anymore!
It can submit directly to the Times opinion section, as the Taliban proved this week.
“What We, the Taliban, Want,” reads the actual headline to an article published Thursday by an actual American newsroom.
The op-ed, authored by Taliban deputy leader and suspected terrorist Sirajuddin Haqqani, opens with a series of sentences that attempt to “both sides” the conflict between the Taliban and the United States and present the Americans as unreliable and untrustworthy negotiators.
“When our representatives started negotiating with the United States in 2018, our confidence that the talks would yield results was close to zero,” he writes. “We did not trust American intentions after 18 years of war and several previous attempts at negotiation that had proved futile.”
Haqqani adds, “Nevertheless, we decided to try once more. The long war has exacted a terrible cost from everyone. We thought it unwise to dismiss any potential opportunity for peace no matter how meager the prospects of its success.”
Peace is good, I will give him that. No sense in criticizing the Times for publishing a call for peace, even if it comes from a man who is wanted in connection to deadly terrorist assaults on civilians, assassination plots, and multiple attacks on U.S. and coalition forces.
But then Haqqani writes, “We did not choose our war with the foreign coalition led by the United States. We were forced to defend ourselves.”
This is a damnable lie. The Taliban 100% chose this conflict with the U.S.
No one forced the Taliban to invite al Qaeda to establish its base of operations in Afghanistan in exchange for Saudi money. No one forced the Taliban to deny the U.S. lawful entry into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. No one forced the Taliban to fight alongside al Qaeda. This fight was of the Taliban’s own choosing and now, having suffered dearly for its choices, it is using an American newspaper to rewrite history and present itself as a victim.
The remainder of Haqqani’s op-ed is much of the same, seeking to present the Taliban as a stoic and proud organization that wants only to make peace with a country whose negotiators keep “flip-flopping” and “moving goal posts.”
“Even when President Trump called off the talks, we kept the door to peace open because we Afghans suffer the most from the continuation of the war,” he wrote. “No peace agreement, following on the heels of such intensive talks, comes without mutual compromises.”
He adds, “That we stuck with such turbulent talks with the enemy we have fought bitterly for two decades, even as death rained from the sky, testifies to our commitment to ending the hostilities and bringing peace to our country.”
What faultless martyrs you are.
“The new Afghanistan will be a responsible member of the international community,” Haqqani writes. “We will remain committed to all international conventions as long as they are compatible with Islamic principles.”
His motivations make sense. Any good officer understands the necessity of propaganda and its broad dissemination in media. But what is the Times’s excuse for printing his lies? Is this not the same U.S. newspaper that has been sounding the alarm nonstop since the 2016 presidential election about the dangers of disinformation online?
The ghost of the old Soviet Union must be kicking itself for having wasted so much time dealing with that idiot Walter Duranty. As it turns out, Stalin’s politburo could have just submitted op-eds downplaying and obfuscating its crimes directly to the Times’s opinion section.
