Let's review the list of people who have supported, implicitly or explicitly, the idea of talking to the Taliban:

British military commander Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, who recently returned to the UK after completing a six-month tour in southern Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command.

General John Craddock, Supreme Operational Commander of NATO.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Indeed, Karzai reached out to the Taliban last year and has been supporting talks for two years.

The government of key American ally Saudi Arabia, which has already brought together Afghan government officials and Taliban members for preliminary talks in the kingdom. In an indication of the leadership's commitment, King Abdullah personally broke the Eid al-Fitr fast with the Afghan delegation.

That's the recent past. Now let's talk about the immediate future.

Soon, Afghan officials and former Taliban members will meet again in Saudi Arabia. Intermediaries, including "Arab Afghans" who fought the Soviets and still have deep contacts in Afghanistan, are also working to bring the government and the Taliban to the table.

The Taliban have rejected Karzai's offer of protection for Mullah Omar, and insist that they will not talk until foreign troops leave the country.

With this context in mind, I believe we have three basic paths to choose from:

1. Try the idea of "divide and conquer" as endorsed by the New York Times and General David McKiernan. This involves outreach to "tribal leaders" as well as to other Taliban elements perceived to have superficial loyalties to the movement. Though its proponents have repeatedly sought to distinguish this strategy from the Anbar Awakenings in Iraq, it seems that tribal outreach would involve paying tribes for their loyalties.

This strategy might ease some violence. But it would not bring the conflict closer to resolution. It hinges on the idea that a limited escalation, including further strikes into Pakistan, would allow NATO to corner and eradicate the Taliban. Yet it does not address the fact that such strikes, and the high civilian casualties that accompany them, are a major factor driving Taliban recruitment. Moreover, it does not address the Afghan government's basic lack of credibility in the eyes of many Afghans.

2. Intensive diplomacy. Working through Saudi Arabia and other intermediaries, we would do everything possible to bring the Afghan government and the Taliban together, with the basic aim of developing a power-sharing agreement that would leave the Taliban in partial control of areas where they are currently strong, yet evoke statements from the Taliban that they will recognize the government's legitimacy in Kabul and renounce violence, agreeing to participate in electoral and administrative politics in collaboration with the government.

We ourselves would not talk directly to the Taliban, at least at first; instead we would focus on regional outreach to Iran, the Arab Gulf states, India and Pakistan (including encouraging them to resolve the Kashmir crisis). This regional outreach would have the aim of solidifying Afghanistan's neighbors' commitment to its stability, especially regarding its borders. These governments could also place pressure on the Taliban and other militant elements within Afghanistan to cooperate with the government following the withdrawal of foreign troops. In the final stages of NATO withdrawal, we would likely sit down with both the Karzai government and Taliban leadership.

3. Call the Taliban to the table and tell them that we are leaving. Under this framework, we would simply announce our withdrawal and see what the Taliban decided to do. Our offer would be stark: talk to us and work out terms, or you get nothing - no aid, no recognition, no sovereignty (meaning we would strike again at any time if we saw cause), and no credibility.

Under all these options, we have three major forms of leverage: force, money, and recognition. The people who say that the Taliban would not come to the negotiating table are ignoring not only the fact that they already have, but also the fact that we likely have things the Taliban want. Taking control of one of the world's poorest countries, devastated by thirty years of continuous warfare, covered with land mines and small arms, would quickly prove an even more pyrrhic victory than it was in 1996. The Taliban wanted international recognition, including a seat at the UN, in 1998. The image of them as complete barbarians, "medieval" in the New York Times' phraseology, is not fully accurate; since the late 1990s, in fact, the Taliban have shown a sophisticated awareness of how to present themselves in the media. It's worth noting that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 occurred only after the Taliban's complete diplomatic isolation, and moreover that this event was staged as a spectacle for Western media.

Surveying the three options, I do not favor the first for the reasons I outlined above. I believe the second - full diplomatic outreach - would be worth trying. As for the third, I believe at the least that it is a realistic possibility. We were negotiating with the Vietnamese from 1968 to 1973, and in the end we failed to achieve the goal of the war: an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam. Once all the embellishments are stripped away, we must admit that we left Vietnam, after fighting a war deemed at many points critical to our global interests and national security, and did not in the end compromise our own security. If we accept the opinions of top military commanders that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won through military means alone, and we do not have the political will and imagination to execute the full diplomatic package necessary to resolve the war, then we will need to leave Afghanistan.

As far as the New York Times' Editorial Board's view that

Afghanistan’s only chance is a long-term American commitment that also includes far more economic assistance and support for political development. Washington also must come up with a better mixture of incentives and pressures to persuade Pakistan to shut down havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Mr. Karzai must cut all ties with corrupt officials and clean up and strengthen his national police.

I regard that as unrealistic and counterproductive. Unrealistic, because the corruption and inefficiency of the development sector in Afghanistan is well known (free registration required), as are the disastrous effects of US military aid to Pakistan, some of which has been indirectly funneled to the Taliban itself. Counterproductive, because long-term military commitments are precisely what the United States does not need now, either from the perspective of economic prosperity or military security. There is little reason to believe that a "limited escalation" in Afghanistan without substantial changes in diplomatic strategy would do anything more than draw us in deeper to a difficult conflict.

There is a limit to how well civilians in the United States can evaluate the diplomatic contours of the situation in Afghanistan, yet I believe two facts are clear: top military leaders are agreeing on the need for diplomatic solutions, and initial diplomatic outreach has met with partial success. In the light of those two developments, the repeated dismissal, whether by the New York Times or others, of proponents of negotiations is both disturbing and wrong.