Talk? To whom exactly? Osama? Last time I looked he hadn't left a return number on the White House answering machine. Iran? Yeah right, let David Duke deliver the invite.
As much as I would like to see a non-violent end to this little phase of human history, I seriously doubt talking to people that bomb schools because they let little girls attend would do much good. We are dealing with a whole new global problem that needs to be stopped but no one can seem to locate the queen bee. In my neighborhood, every house has a lawn mower, not a cache of AK-47's and RPG's. Getting rid of the jihadis isn't going to be done by talking, unless of course we can sponsor a dinner dance for Al-Quaida members and when they are finally all seated at the table, we go Edgar Allen Poe on them, lock the doors and have a good old fashioned barn burning.
And why does it always have to be us to lay down our arms first? How about a show of good faith by our friends the Taliban? Let them put all their hardware in a neat little pile and we'll consider a conversation.
I'm sorry, I don't have the answer either, but talking will get us nowhere. Be honest, we are talking about cultures that are stuck in the 10th century with warloards that want to hold their own version of the crusades. It would be like trying to talk the pests into leaving your garden alone.
Find a way to allow their youth (boys AND girls) to get educations, share some of those petro-dollars with the masses and create some kind of Rooseveltian citizen work programs, heck get them to visit
Disneyland Paris to see how the other folks live and maybe, just maybe in three or four generations, we can all sit at the table and reason together.
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