You never want to have military forces deployed for strictly political reasons. But, you also want to have a compelling explanation for why you are withdrawing troops without them having first accomplished their mission. And I think President Hamid Karzai is making the wrong gamble with his recent attempts to boost his own popularity at our expense.
President Hamid Karzai’s startling threat to join the Taliban if foreigners don’t stop meddling in Afghanistan and his strident criticism of the West’s role have worsened relations with Washington at a time when the U.S. military wants closer cooperation ahead of a potentially decisive offensive this summer.
What Karzai is doing is creating the exact narrative Obama needs to take to Congress and the American people to explain why we are removing our troops from Afghanistan and our support for his government. I don’t think Karzai is doing this at our bidding. He’s gambling that he can bash us with his own constituency without us having the option of abandoning him.
That’s a gamble that would work quite well with a President John McCain, but Obama is looking for a way out of Afghanistan that doesn’t come with a huge political cost. He might just take Karzai up on his offer.
Alternatively, we could do what we’ve historically done, which is to send a message to Karzai’s praetorian guard that we have no further use for him. I don’t advocate political coups and murder, but Karzai should be more cognizant of our track record.
Didn’t you just mention Diem? I think you did.
Further–examples like the ones you gave are what my 11th-grade history teacher called “the one-guy policy,” i.e. the U.S./CIA only likes to deal with one guy per country, because we can’t be bothered otherwise (plus, you know, economy of scale and all that). Then when the one guy gets uppity, well, “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out.”
Looking back, it’s amazing to me that a high school U.S. history teacher in South Orange County would say that in class. Well, maybe not–my term paper assignment was Executive Order 9066.
Ah Diem, the only legitimate guy in our half of the country.
Boo Man I do hope that you are right. We need to get out of there.
Karzai is not only corrupt but crazy.
He is going to undermine and NATO efforts.
This latest round of Karzai pronouncements comes after Obama was there.
IF we got out of Afghanistan and stopped trying to bring peace to the Middle East, we might see out way out of all the awful quagmires we have enaged in.
Obama can change his policy. He can state that it is not going to work and that
a)no more US troops to Afghanistan
b)he is beginning the shut down of the Afghanistan mission as of now.
I know I sound sily, but why not have all US and NATO troops out of there by September 30, 2010?
It would also be good to put US Marines back on security for US embassies around the world.
There are more private contracters than US military personnel in Afghanistan. The State Department can’t monitor it’s contractors.
The spelling maid quit, pardon the bad.
I don’t see Obama moving on this until the joint operations with Pakistan focused on the regions that harbored al Quaeda are complete. Then, we can say that we have fulfilled US interests. And are quite willing to leave at the instructions of the legitimate Afghan government. Then it becomes China’s, Russia’s, Pakistan’s, and Iran’s problem again.
The failure of the US to build an Afghan army capable of keeping Karzai in power and Karzai’s squandering of US resources have jeopardized the ability of the US to help keep him in power.
It is indeed time to leave. The lack of discipline of US troops is causing more damage than good. “Shoot first and let Allah sort them out” is not a good rule of operation in this type of war.
One problem with being mired in corruption, living in his own echo chamber – Karzai doesn’t understand that we had an election in 2008 and it made a difference.
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(TIME) – To some it may seem as if President Hamid Karzai has a death wish. The Afghan leader has lately begun sticking it to the U.S. and its Western allies — the only force protecting him from a surging Taliban, which hanged the last foreign-backed President when it reached Kabul in 1996. Having infuriated the Obama Administration by continuing to drag his feet on corruption — and then cozying up to Iran and China when Washington turned up the heat — Karzai ratcheted up the rhetoric last week.
So while he may have been installed by a U.S.-led invasion, if Karzai is to survive the departure of Western forces, he will have to reinvent himself as a national leader with an independent power base. He’s obviously determined not to go the way of Mohammad Najibullah, the former Soviet-backed leader who was executed by the Taliban seven years after the Red Army withdrew. So from Karzai’s point of view, he’s pushing back against the U.S. not only because he can, but also because he must if he is to survive politically.
Lawmakers: Afghan leader threatens to join Taliban
≈ See my diary — Karzai: Foreign Troops Are ‘Invaders’ ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
People seem to have a predilection to underestimate Obama. First the Russians, now this. I doubt Obama is looking for an excuse to leave Afghanistan, but I don’t think he’s going to go along with being pushed around either.
“if you should fall on the Afghan plain, roll on your rifle and blow out your brain” — Rudyard Kipling
Karzai is doomed. Either the Taliban or the CIA will get him. I wouldn’t want to be eft to the tender mercies of either. And it’s a toss up which one is more vicious.
I’d be impressed if a typical CIA operative could pick Karzai out of a line up given their track record over the last god-knows-how-long. The CIA can’t find its car keys.
But, yeah, Karzai’s doomed. Give it five years and he’ll be smoking Cubans and drinking Scotch in London or Amsterdam talking about taking the country back or some such nonsense.
And some Republican will be screaming about the liberals “losing” Afghanistan.
Oui has it right. Karzai is not crazy. He wont “join the Taliban” for the simple reason that the Taliban probably wouldn’t take him.
However, the US and NATO are going to leave Afghanistan someday, if not under this president, then the next. Karzai had better try to prepare for that. If Obama is smart enough to use Karzai’s attitude as an opportunity to get out of Dodge, that would be wonderful. I doubt he will, but it would be wonderful.
If all else fails, Karzai will need new digs when things fall apart. Hence his cozy relations with Iran. Makes perfect sense. I can’t blame him.
Assassinating Karzai or backing a coup against him would be the stupidest thing the US could do. Of course, that doesn’t mean they wont do it.
All in all, it is a sign of how great things are going in Afghanistan. If your own puppet talks openly about switching sides…well, you all can do the math.
Of course he’s going to start talking like this. The US is cracking down on the poppy smuggling business.
However, as has been stated, he knows better than anyone else that there is nothing really he can do about it and all this talk is not going to get him out of the pickle. It’s not like the Taliban are going to spare him alive if the US forces leave, especially given how antagonistic he has been to ISI.
As such, the elders of Marja and Helmand don’t want to have anything to do with Karzai’s men and instead demanded NATO forces provide security to the regions.
Karzai is showing his drug lord side in how he is handling the logistics of this. His green cape talked a good world vision for a long time but he’s become impatient to use the Afghan trained forces now to give him the real kingpin role. If he doesn’t trim his greed he may get what he says he’s wishing for and all that nasty stuff that comes with it.
Even not counting Iraq and Afghanistan, the bulk of our forces deployed around the world are there strictly for political reasons. Certainly not for “defense”. So I don’t get what you mean.
In Afghanistan, I have to think that all the talk recently about coming to terms with parts of the Taliban sets up a way to separate our interests from Karzai’s. Say we’ve reached an accommodation and get the hell out. Sounds good to me. But I’m still waiting for reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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(Reuters) – Under the former Bush administration, Washington and Delhi built closer ties, whose centrepiece was a deal effectively recognising India as a nuclear power. India also expanded its presence in Afghanistan after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban following 9/11, unnerving Pakistan. Many analysts are sceptical that Pakistan will be willing to target Afghan Taliban militants based in its border areas as long as it thinks it might have to use them to counter India’s presence in Afghanistan.
At the same time, India has long cast a wary eye on Pakistan‘s close relationship with China. After defeating India in a border war in 1962, China became Pakistan’s most reliable ally, providing financial, diplomatic and military support, including to its nuclear weapons programme. Tensions have also been rising again along the undemarcated border between India and China which runs along the fringes of disputed Kashmir in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. So the three countries, even without tensions over Afghanistan, are already delicately balanced.
Pakistan undercuts Karzai’s peace talks with the Taliban by arresting Mullah Baradar
And we haven’t even talked about the Northern Alliance warlords, human rights and Karzai support of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
The Iraqis, Ahmajinedad, Netanyahu and now Karzai all appear to have scant respect for Obama and all the “help” he has given them. Perhaps he will get the message and start withdrawing from the middle east and leave them all to each other’s tender mercies…
piss on him for over a year before he began to fight back. We can only hope that his patience with Karzai is running out now. It would have been our dream scenario in 1968 if Nguyen Van Thieu had publicly said the things Karzai is saying now.
Lyndon Johnson would have thrown him off the White House roof.
No he wouldn’t. Diem wasn’t there because LBJ liked him, he was there because he was seen as an asset to the US war machine. Nothing he said would have changed that until his usefulness vanished.
Karzai’s usefulness has vanished, so he’s trying to set himself up for a post-occupation Afghanistan. He won’t accomplish that by talking sweet about the foreigners. Well, actually he’s unlikely to accomplish it anyhow.
That Karzai’s comments were directed to the legislature, though it is clear he understood they would be make public. The urgent issue in Karzai’s world is his control of the electoral commission and much of his recent posture is hard-ball domestic politics.
In some respects having a leader in Afghanistan who is not perceived as a puppet suits our short-term interests as well. Karzai presents a lot of problems to US policy in Afghanistan, to be sure, but this outspoken opposition to US and NATO may not be the worst of it, by a long shot. And if this outburst is an unspoken acknowledgement of the increasing power of the Afghani legislature it may actually be a positive sign.
Our policy regarding Karzai recently has been to often go around him and provide resources and support to provincial politicians. Maybe it is having an effect.
The context of his remarks was a ‘closed-door meeting Saturday with selected lawmakers:’
Emphasis added. The article adds ‘lawmakers said they felt Karzai was pandering to hard-line or pro-Taliban members of parliament and had no real intention of joining the insurgency.’ Frankly if Karzai is losing his grip on the legislature it is probably not a terrible thing for us just at the moment.
Raising the stakes…
White House warns Karzai visit could be cancelled
that Karzai is on the pipe–opium pipe that is. Some U.S. bigwig hinted as much, because he’s been acting up something awful, showing signs of instability.
Or is this an excuse to ease his ass out being built up as we speak over here?
Galbraith was widely misrepresented and was responding to a direct accusation of malfeasance by Karzai:
No love lost between those two and it is still in the context of the power Karzai seeks to wield over his own electoral commission.