It's up to Karzai to make his government legitimate, not us. If he feels he can't do that without making deals with the Taliban there isn't a thing we can do about it in the final analysis. We aren't there to make Afghanistan safe for Karzai. We're there to make Afghanistan and the Pakistani border region safe for America. Frankly no one cares what Afghanistan looks like as long as they aren't traing terrorist to attack us there. So far we've killed a shit load of Al Qaeda in the past year or two and a not insignificant number of Taliban leadership. It's their leadership we're after not the soldiers. The soldiers are in it for a paycheck, no more.