At today’s press briefing, White House spokesperson Eric Schultz said that it’s okay for the U.S. to make prisoner swaps with the Taliban because the “Taliban is an armed insurgency” as opposed to the Islamic State which “is a terrorist group” and “we don’t make concessions to terrorist groups.”
This bizarre statement came in response to a question from ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “How is what the Jordanians are talking about doing any different than what the United States did to get the release of Bergdahl – releasing prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to the Taliban, which is clearly a terrorist organization?” he asked.
“As you know, uhm, this was highly discussed, uhm, at the time,” began Schultz slowly. “And prisoner swaps are a traditional end of conflict, uh, uh, interaction that happens. Uhm, As the war in Afghanistan wound down, uhm, we felt like like it was the appropriate thing to do.”
Haltingly, Schultz continued: “The President’s bedrock commitment as Commander in Chief is to leave no man or woman behind. That’s the principle he was operating under.”
“Isn’t that what the Jordanians are operating under?” Karl shot back. “I mean the Taliban is still conducting terrorist attacks, so you can’t really say that the war is ended as far as they’re concerned.”
“Well, I’d also point out that the Taliban is an armed insurgency; ISIL is a terrorist group,” Schultz said. “So we don’t make concessions to terrorist groups.”
“You don’t think the Taliban is a terrorist group?” said Karl.
“I don’t think that the Taliban, uhm, the Taliban is an armed insurgency and that’s why this arrangement was dealt,” replied Schultz.
His reluctance to call the Taliban “terrorists” sounds eerily similar to this Al Jazeera executive’s ban of the words: “Islamist,” “jihad,” “terrorist,’ “radical” & “extremist” from use among the outlet’s English language correspondents. The difference is that Al Jazeera is a media organization run by the government of Qatar, whereas the White House…