Negotiate with the Taliban to ... split them!

In the NYTimes, here

"...But there is a growing belief, particularly among experts who have been advising the Obama administration on Afpak policy, that it is important to peel away some lower members of the Taliban, in sort of a divide-and-conquer strategy. General Petraeus, the head of the United States Central Command, said last year that one element of the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that might be applicable in Afghanistan was outreach to what he has described as “reconcilables” among the insurgents.....

But critical to winning back the population’s trust, many experts counter, is the absence of war. And getting to the absence of war may require making the American public comfortable with the idea that the Taliban might not necessarily equal Al Qaeda..."