Absolutely rowanwitch!
the Taliban preside over a feudal tribal system of life religion and government that is virtually unchanged since the twelfth centrury.
America, and by default Britain, imagine that the way to solve the obvious hatred of the Taliban for Western society is to send that western society;s military might to invade their country and subjugate them by force.
They have managed to do that, having patently ignored the experience of the Russians, who stayed for over a decade and retired defeated with no real progress made - or indeed their own lamentable experience in Viet Nam where they discovered that a nation fighting for its political independence is not about to be beaten in a guerilla war in its own back yard, where it fights fairly and sqaurely on its own terms - which are neither fair, nor square, as we have disocered to our tragic cost.
Dialogue is the only possible way forward, that is assuming we have not enraged the Arabic temprement sufficiently to mean that they will stand and die on their pride before talking to infidel invaders.
How long before it dawns on the military and the politicians (and one does direct the other here) that conflict has got us nowhere in real terms - dialogue may not either, but we are now in a 'nothing to lose'situation, since the troops dying there, and the threat of trerrorism over here, are only increased every day we remain there.