Emerging Strategy Calls for Weakening, Not Routing, Taliban - washingtonpost.com - 0 views
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Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process. Some White House advisers have noted that although Hezbollah is a source of regional instability, it is not a threat to the United States. The senior administration official said the Hezbollah example has not been cited specifically to President Obama and has been raised only informally outside the Situation Room meetings.
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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that "there is clearly a difference between" the Taliban and "an entity that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to strike the U.S. homeland." "I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things," Gibbs said. "Their capability is somewhat different, though, on that continuum of transnational threats."