Rosie Dimanno has covered Marine operations in the Helmand Province, and four months ago The Captain’s Journal said we like Rosie. She has it going on – she gets it. Concerning negotiations with the Taliban, Rosie tells us just what the scoop is.

There’s really no excuse, in these days of instant reporting verification, to misquote or misrepresent a quote.

Unless, of course, the intention is to manipulate and deceive.

This is what Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, the man in charge of Britain’s 8,000 troops in Afghanistan, said last weekend: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.

“We may well leave with there being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency.”

Carleton-Smith called for negotiations with the Taliban.

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.”

It’s nothing that hasn’t been said before. Indeed, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has, for the past three years, urged Taliban leaders to join him in dialogue – provided they accept Afghanistan’s new constitution and denounce violence. The Taliban has disdainfully declined.

They just keep killing, both troops and civilians. In recent months, the neo-Taliban has particularly targeted female aid workers, female-owned small businesses, female teachers.

In so doing, they can pluck out two thorns with one blast: Women who don’t know their place (indoors, under a burqa) and anyone trying to alleviate the misery of Afghan civilians.

The insurgents – more closely associated with Al Qaeda than at any time since pre-2001 – do not negotiate. The militants aren’t interested in securing more Pashtun representation in government. This isn’t political.

It’s about reversing any incremental gains Afghanistan has made since the Taliban was ousted. It’s about imposing, as before, the most narrow, oppressive and isolating of Islamist theocracy on an exhausted citizenry.

This is just what we have been saying for months now. The Anbaris weren’t religiously motivated jihadists, and thus siding with the U.S. was not only in their best interests, but inevitable given the relentless Marine operations in Anbar.

The Taliban are persuaded to fight for other reasons, there is insufficient force projection in Afghanistan, and Rosie is right. Calls for negotiations are not new, and in fact, negotiations themselves are not new, if you count negotiations as effeminate pleading by Hamid Karzai. Just as there have been “talks” with the Iranians for 25 years (contrary to the claims of the surrender-ists), there have been pleas by Hamid Karzai and his ilk for several years for the Taliban to end the violence. They have declined and will continue to do so.