I’m sure the families of those who have died at the hands of Taliban fighters will be thrilled by Vice President Biden’s comments.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:

One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.

So they’re not “per se” our enemies, even though they currently pose a threat to the United States, have killed many American soldiers, seek to overthrow a friendly government, and unrepentantly harbored those who murdered 3,000 of our people on September 11th.

Um, if that doesn’t make you an enemy “per se” of the United States, what does? How many of our people do you have to target for murder before we consider you an enemy? How many terrorist organizations targeting the United States do you need to assist and protect? How many friendly governments do you have to plan to overthrow? Is there a classified standard, or something?