The White House declaration that the U.S. may negotiate prisoner swaps with the Taliban because, unlike the Islamic State (ISIS), it is not considered a terrorist group, is a dangerous spin from reality, Rep. Lee Zeldin says.
"They really have quite a way with words. They have held so much back in calling a spade a spade. I mean we are up against radical Islamic extremism," Zeldin, a New York Republican, said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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On Wednesday, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl asked deputy press secretary Eric Schultz whether Jordan's announcement it would deal with ISIS to win freedom for a captured pilot was analogous to the U.S. trading five Taliban members for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Schultz responded: "As you know, this was highly discussed at the time and prisoner swaps are a traditional end-of-conflict interaction that happens. As the war in Afghanistan wound down, we felt like it was the appropriate thing to do. 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."
Karl noted that like ISIS, the Taliban continue to carry out terrorist attacks, so "you can't really say the war has ended as far as they're concerned."
Schultz, however, suggested that Karl had overlooked an important distinction. "I would also point out that the Taliban is an armed insurgency," he stated, the Free Beacon reports, while ISIS "is a terrorist group. So, we don't make concessions to terrorist groups."
"They can't bring themselves to say it. The fact of the matter is when you have, whether it's the Taliban or if you have a stand sponsor of terrorism, you have groups out there like ISIS and Hezbollah and Hamas, call it for what it is," Zeldin told Steve Malzberg.
"The Taliban, there's no way to spin them with all of their history … in aiding and abetting al-Qaida and other elements causing serious harm to the US and our interests abroad and obviously American service members.
"It's very unfortunate that the White House would try to spin this any other way than reality — that the Taliban and some … other entities are all part of a very dangerous extremist element in the Middle East with a goal of wiping Israel off the map, the goal of disrupting America and our interests abroad. It's unfortunate the White House is playing these games with words."