Bill Frist, visiting Afghanistan, broke an important taboo: he suggested that "people who call themselves Taliban" be invited to join the Afghanistan government. Here's the AP story:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" and their allies into the government. ...

He said the only way to win in places like the volatile southern part of the country is to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."

Now of course I am no fan of the Taliban. It's a Pakistan-backed, ultraconservative Muslim fundamentalist group that can only mean bad news for Afghans. But what's important here is that Frist is recognizing that the Taliban is not the same as Al Qaeda. (See, for instance, my recent piece for TomPaine.com, "There Is No War on Terror.") The so-called War on Terror (yes, I hate that term, too) ought to be aimed at Al Qaeda. So far, there is no evidence at all that AQ-type, foreign fighters have been involved in the Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan.