Nine years in the making: CNN's interview with Fareed Zakaria

Is the Taliban feeling pressure? It's possible. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and representatives from the Taliban are apparently talking. Here is an excerpt from Fareed Zakaria's interview with CNN that echoes a newer side of conversation.

CNN: The U.S. military view seems to be that the talks haven't yielded progress so far, and a senior defense official told CNN, "We don't think the Taliban believe that they're losing to the degree that they'd come to terms in large numbers." Are the talks premature because the effects of the U.S. military buildup haven't been felt yet?

Zakaria: First the very fact that the Taliban are coming to the table in a way they had not been willing to before suggests that they are feeling some pressure.
But I also think you can't get too hung up with this idea that you have to negotiate from a position of strength. Ideally we would have them totally prostrate on the floor and that would be the time to negotiate. But the reality is that this is a very mixed military campaign. I don't know if it's going to be dramatically better one year from now or three years from now.

See the whole interview here.

Sidenote: If you want to get uber cultured on the "American superpower" framework, read Zakaria's The Post-American World. I highly recomend it. One of my favorite reads.