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Is Saving Karzai Worth U.S. Lives?
Ahmad Masood / Reuters
As the U.S. envoy casts doubt on an Afghan troop surge, America takes a skeptical new look at its dodgy partner. Reihan Salam on why we have to hold our nose and make it work.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s relationship with the Obama White House is badly broken, and it's hard to see how it can be fixed. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's explosive call to rethink a troop increase in Afghanistan has renewed doubts within the Obama administration and the larger Democratic foreign-policy community about whether Karzai's government, in its current incarnation, is worth fighting and dying for. And though the president seems to be inching towards a substantial troop increase, these nagging doubts have led to a call for a narrower, more defined commitment to Afghanistan. The fear is that the U.S. mission has become "too big to fail," and that Karzai, like a profligate Wall Street tycoon, is taking the American taxpayer for a ride without making the painful sacrifices necessary to create a viable nation-state.
If Karzai were a clingy ex, Obama could then change his phone number or, in the worst-case scenario, file a restraining order. Instead, Karzai is essential to achieving Obama's strategic objectives in South Asia.
For years, American officials have been profoundly concerned by Karzai's erratic behavior and reports that he tolerates corruption at the highest levels of his government. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post reported in May, the president's advisors had decided "to maintain an arm's-length relationship" with Karzai, and to channel resources to local officials rather than through the Karzai-controlled central government. To that end, President Obama abandoned President Bush's practice of talking to the Afghan president at least twice a month, and he rebuffed all efforts to strike up a closer working relationship. Because Bush had grown so close to Karzai, some critics believed that he—the cowboy president—had grown too deferential. The idea was that by giving Karzai the cold shoulder, Obama would have an easier time demanding results.
But while Bush's partnership with Karzai was problematic, it might nevertheless have been the best approach. Once seen as staunchly pro-American, he has grown increasingly critical of the United States, particularly over heavy civilian casualties that have sparked outrage among Afghans. One interpretation of Karzai's egregious ballot-stuffing during the first and only round of Afghanistan's national elections is that Obama's decision to create some distance deepened Karzai's already deep paranoia. If Karzai were a clingy ex, Obama could then change his phone number or, in the worst-case scenario, file a restraining order. Instead, Karzai is essential to achieving Obama's strategic objectives in South Asia.
For some in Obama's inner circle, the fraudulent election simply confirmed long-held suspicions about Karzai's trustworthiness. Yet that ignores the extent to which he feels as though he has been let down by the United States, under President Obama but also under President Bush. Though one can hardly characterize Iraq as a stunning success, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki consolidated his hold on power only after the United States seized the initiative from the insurgency. Had Maliki been left to his own devices, it is easy to imagine him flailing and eventually being overthrown by a Shia politician willing to take a harder line.
Those who believe that the war in Afghanistan can be salvaged maintain that a successful U.S.-led counterinsurgency effort could give Karzai the breathing room he needs to strengthen the Afghan state, or it will allow others in a national unity government to do the same. Now, however, the Taliban are very much on the rise, and Karzai finds himself forced to make grubby compromises to maintain his grip on power. He has thus stacked his cabinet with a number of unsavory characters, including some notorious human-rights violators like General Abdul Rashid Dostum, further alienating him from his American allies. Karzai's harshest critics believe that he hasn't done enough to take on corruption and warlordism and the poppy trade. This begs the question: how can we expect the Afghan president to wage war on corruption and crime when he’s barely keeping his head above water?
• Christopher Buckley: Lessons from Another War
• Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Don't Abandon Us, ObamaRather than rethink the arm's-length approach, the Obama White House seems prepared to double down on it. Earlier talk of doing an end-run around Karzai's central government was mostly talk, but that seems to be changing. Supporting promising local leaders instead of Kabul sounds like a decent option. Looked at it another way, however, and it certainly sounds as though the United States is looking to cultivate warlords of its own—a step that won't exactly improve the relationship. Of all the miserably bad options facing the president and his cabinet, the view reportedly backed by Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Admiral Mike Mullen has the best chance of success: commit to a large troop increase—in the neighborhood of 30,000 or more—in an effort to secure the Afghan population and give the country's civilian leadership, including the paranoid and problematic Karzai, the time and the tools the need to eventually do the job on their own.
Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party.
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flyoverland
There used to be a saying at the State Department about tin-horn dictators: "Yes, he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." However, I wouldn't trade one American life for his political career. At some point, when people don't care about democracy and freedom, they deserve what they get.
khepri
Let the dithering now bear fruit: it is time for Obama to address the nation in order to help us see how the Pentagon and the terror industrial complex have screwed us all--including all the collaterals and non-combatants swept up in this obsessive, costly and truly futile campaign.
FreddySez
I'm not convinced that this mission has a strategic upside, but there's another level on which it would be very damaging simply to leave: If you thought abandoning the Iraqi Kurds in 1991 was bad, just wait until we abandon every single female in Afghanistan.
Every woman who spoke out or went to work, every girl who went to school. What happens to them in a post-U.S. Taliban resurgence?
Also, Reihan: That is not what "begs the question" means. I'm shoveling against the tide there, but you should know better.
birdfanMN
Freddy, Are you willing to offer the life of your children for the Women of Afghanistan? So you want to take our mission beyond nation building into Womens Rights? Using our military?
FreddySez
BirdFan - You raise an excellent point. No, I would not *send* American troops to the other side of the globe on a women's rights mission. I hold the lives of our military personnel very dear.
However, we're not debating whether to take up this mission; we're already there. And because of the conditions we've promoted in Afghanistan over the last eight years, pulling up stakes now will leave women there worse off than if we'd never arrived.
The danger I'm speaking of is one we helped create, or at least amplify. In effect, we told them, "It's okay now - we're here - you can act like free people." That's something you have to back up.
Am I saying we were wise to put ourselves in this situation? No. I'm just recognizing that we're in it, and that we've taken on a particular responsibility that is difficult merely to shrug off.
FreddySez
And just to show I'm not alone in my thinking...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-11/in-security-cr isis-afghan-women-leaders-demand-support/?cid=hp:mainpromo8
oliverckerr
The issue is the Afghanistan monopoly on the world's opium poppy which is distilled into heroin right on the farm!
Every time you pull up at a Stop and Go, to get gas, or a coffee, or cigs, outside a few feet away from the door someone is hanging out. That person is dealing crack, and whern available heroin.
This is all over the country. When Barky Obama's oldest daughter conmes home from school with an almost unnoticible droop in her eyes, from a morning snort with a friend, then maybe our thin skinned president will get wise!
When more than one million pre-teen and early teen ageres are getting into it, . . . ohhhhh, in control, "I only use twice a week," then you will see the damaage someone bound to be addicted for life is willing to commit, to get their drug of choice. The unnecessary mayhem in your life in America, brought on by ignoring the real issue.
We can occupy all the poppy fields, and pay the farmers cash in advance (CIA). That must be oour policy!
November 12, 2009. Cyberspace @ The Daily Beast
I dedicate this post to all of those decent people who seek a rational sensible approach to defeating the Taliiban and al Qaeda, the reason we went into Afghanistan.
This is an open letter to president Obama, his, The Daily Beast watchers, and of course the readers and posters @ this page.
Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we must do, how to do it, and why, and what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that cannot be ruled out. The American people are definitely going to find out when I wrote this essay and where I posted it.
How the American people are going to find out is "seek writ" media strategy me v. domestic counter counter intelligence volks who have dogged my life more than 40 years. I am duty bound not to release how I am going to get my nme in front of all the American people. You will surely read about it.
In the event president Obama decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, it will be on behalf of his reelection, not because it was or is the smart thing to do. Upon my election we will be immediately going back to Afghanistan, redeploying for reasons you can deduct upon reading what follows.
Now to the Afghani solution:
We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack. Were that the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what is here revealed!
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium they meticulously grow. On this planet, world wide, opium is the grand poppa of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought every day on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC, on the streets of Kabul, and by the barrack gates where our tropps are billited, began it's life a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the rich Afghanistan poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.
93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms! They are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide! Similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn.
Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.
The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into our country, to be sold in our ghettos and suburban neighborhoods and school yards.
For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars, our school yards one of their retail outlets!
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea.
We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, more on the way and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.
Surely, you, the reader, hopefully a White House official involved in the deliberations over what and how to proceed in Afghanistan do not want to see any more American lives lost or blood shed.
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets millions of dollars, peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region.
For the international criminal drug cartels the opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illigitimate unwashed tax free dollars per annum!
Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose their hundreds of billions of dollars and would be facing their own recession. Street corner drug dealers would be signing up for unemployment checks. All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed!
That is exactly what we want.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike! Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy Afghani farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away the days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!
Mr President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but General Stanley McChrystal and his military bureaucrats, besides Gelb and his gang, and all the retired cable news talking heads grousing every day are all misreading and misleading the Afghanistan war.
The Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen stated,
"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."
Oh! The taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local neighbor hooded school boards? Hardly! their Afghanistan infrastructure has one purpose: controlling the opium poppy after the harvest!
The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout their region, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without many millions of dollars.
A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip," talks about a potential oil pipe line, the real reason was to have some lengthy conversations on a throw away cell phone with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act because no one would suspect heroin originating in far a way Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north.
The oil pipe line talks were a hoax. The Taliban were hear to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline, moolah for the mullah.
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army.The unalighned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight.
With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani people will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium is key to everything happening there!
We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)
The White House failure to respond to this open letter will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the possibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office. As the person who created the Vehicle for World Peace, I can promise you that much for sure. But I am not the issue here, only what "eye" say is the issue.
The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the main and only topic.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two included for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole crop raw, just like unefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 65 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.
The war momentum will immediately shift!
Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up, our invited guests for a steel jacket lunch.
The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.
Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate an eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only their military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of knee jerk reactions to my The Hunt For The Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for the president, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, but maybe not.
Certainly wagging this Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.
Don't you know the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Too bad our President is surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they realize the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hooded school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban grunts.
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by CIA shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Super incentive for the farmers. Less work more money.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with their remotely detonated roadside attacks. Retired military will be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to tell you why because they support that opium trade just the way it is.
We are purchasing their poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. Though I pun CIA as standing for Cash In Advance this is a job for our enlisted soldiers in the field to negotiate with the farms where they are dug in, not CIA officers who are from Kabul, not living on the farms in foxholes!
The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!
When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us.
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. or run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
Regardless what Obama's surrounding bureaucrats say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin. Don't we want that? Don't you? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!
Unless Obama wants it guaranteed before the end of his first year that he is a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say.
A note to my The Daily Beast friends. I'm remodeling my page in cyberspace, taking my internet candidacy to the next level, getting ready to add a forum for commentary. Have a pre limb look, missing the Forum: michaelslevinson.com
candidate for president
michaelslevinson.com
crngndmhm
I've looked at your website and it looks like a website I created for a high school class. Except for the fact that my high school website was actually a little better. The intentional misspellings while you may find them humourous or quirky are very annoying. It's too bad that any good ideas you might have are mired with the rest of the shit.
oliverckerr
michaelslevinson.com website was designed using a free, carefully designed template available in the open source community. What is too bad is your ignorance masked by fascistic rigidity.
You find annoying spelling administrator, "ad minis traitor." That's too bad for you. Then the concept of world peace beginning with a peaceful night, the whole world participating in a cultural event must also be disturbing.
In my lexicon, good ship mother earth is mudder urf, and yoo are "F."
There is more straight up information displayed in a pleasing manner on michaelslevinson.com than any other current affairs web site in cyberspace. That is why the site is developing a life of its own, the number of unique visitors in the hundreds and nearly 40,000 hits so far this month.
My writing is for your children and your children's children. It's art, that stems from the heart. Knot for fascists.
I'm adding a forum so people can ask quest yins.
michaelslevinson.com
FloridaBoy12
Looks to me like Karzai is the main problem in Afghanistan. He seems to be holding back the progress that we are working for. Until he stands tall and becomes accountable for his actions, we shouldn't be so quick to back him.
The United States can't afford to back him, he won't even back his own peopple. He's trying to play both sides and benefit from the fallout.
oliverckerr
That is why I keep pushing the concept of going for the gold - the opium poppy, and leave kabul alone! When we enrich the farmers with cash in Advance, and protect thier families from Taliban, war lord, and al Qaeda thugs, the Afghani people will be begin to rebuild their country from the bottom up!
They will establish their own government, not from the top down, beginning on the farm!
michaelslevinson.com
Resolute
The problem with this article is that it assume that a strong central government is the ultimate solution to the problem of Afghanistan. This might be true if our aim is a long-term nation-building exercise that will involve allocating a large majority of foreign policy resources to that area. In my opinion, that would simply turn Afghanistan into "a black hole of US foreign policy," as Fareed Zakaria once characterized Iraq.
Since Matt Hoh, I've been more inclined to the idea of supporting multiple regional warlords, striking deals with them to keep terrorist activities against the US and Pakistan in check, and keeping Afghanistan as a decentralized society. It is not clear that the people of Afghanistan really want democracy for their country because it appears that most of the non-urban inhabitants of the country prefer tribal government over centralized democracy. Letting Kabul become its own city-state on focusing on our original, narrow objectives is probably the only way for us to carve some success out of this war without devoting massive amounts of foreign policy resources that we'll need for other issues.
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n--Y--squareyellowpaperoliverckerr
How ignorant! Pay the farmers for their crop. Do nothing beyond digging in on all the poppy fields, so Taliban etx has to come to us. Harvest the whole crop. Mulch it immediately.
There isn't any rewason to destroy the farmer's livelihood.
michaelslevinson.com
FreddySez
The more I think about this, the more I ask: What changed about Afghanistan between September 10, 2001 and September 12, 2001?
The abuses of the Taliban were no secret before then. Neither were the support for Al Qaeda or the presence of training camps. There was hardly any call then for a regime change or nation-building initiative.
What changed was an atrocity for which certain people inside Afghanistan bore responsibility.
So, in retrospect, is it wrong to think our mission there should have been strictly punitive? I mean old-school, 1916, Pershing into Mexico style: Kill or capture the people responsible, destroy the capacity for future action, and sure, sow the poppy fields with herbicide. (I am aware that Pershing never actually caught Pancho Villa, but the model is still worth considering.)
For reasons I mention above, it's too late to treat the engagement that way now. Had it been proposed in the fall of 2001, I'm sure a lot of people would have rejected it as intemperate and emotion-based. But the deep commitment we made instead is proving to be q
FreddySez
(sorry, cut off:)
...quite an albatross.
Dolmance
For those of you who don't remember that old softy liberal President Kennedy, I would advise the current President to read up on what we did to a similarly corrupt head of state in Vietnam by the name of Ngo Diem.
We killed him. We did it because he was a corrupt SOB who was presiding over a country where American soldiers were getting killed and we figured his life wasn't worth a hoot compared to our people in harm's way.
Maybe we should do the same in Afghanistan. Because Americans are in danger over there. And they shouldn't have to die for the likes of a corrupt, miserable, lying douchebag like Hamid Karzai.
ThompsonNM
Eight years into Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine that "the problematic and paranoid" Karzai is doing anything but, as you put it, "taking the American taxpayer for a ride without making the painful sacrifices necessary to create a viable nation-state." Who seriously thinks this hyena will--or can be made--to change his spots?
Leaving the taxpayer aside, I urge your consideration of the thousands of troops who would have to be deployed in Karzai's support. Do we really have a force that large ready to leap once more into the fray? My soldier son has already done two Iraq tours and, though he says very little about his experiences, he appears to have emerged with his faculties intact. He deserves better than a trip to Afghanistan and better than the thousands who died to prop up the nearly endless parade of greedy and corrupt regimes we once supported in Vietnam.
It's time to make a virtue of necessity and start to think more creatively about the conficts in which we immerse ourselves. What would 40,000 troops do to better the plight of women in Afghanistan? How many kids can be fed or educated from the cockpit of a humvee or helicopter? Maybe the military has a role to play, but so do any number of government agencies and NGOs that have so far been kept on the sidelines. And why don'twe pay more attention to the very real interests that such countries as India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China all have in whatever happens in Afghanistan?
My son has accepted the risks of being a soldier. Before his leaders squander his future and the future of thousands like him on a regime like Karzai's, those leaders should be much clearer about what good can possibly come from betting so much blood and treasure on the barbaric whims of Afghanistan's thugs, warlords and dope traffickers.
Cognomen
When has Karzai shown any indication that if we spill the blood of our children to give him the opportunity, he is more interested in creating a legitimate government than a more efficient kleptocracy?
kscr14
Why do we feel we can fix the entire world? Our own people are hurting and we have many things that need to be solved here. I want to be a compassionate nation, BUT, not at our own expense for years and years.
my3sons
I agree, we have such poverty, unemployment, kids who get one hot meal a day if they go to school, our students can barely find Europe on the map and we worry about Afghanistan? Not a single American life should be given to that country. We should be compassionate and support them, I heard that we are sending them h1n1 vaccines (even though I cannot find one for my kids). It is time for us to stop playing world police and clean up our own backyard.
whipmawhopma
Emergence of Anti-Taliban Militias a Cause for Concern
By Matthias Gebauer in Kunduz, Afghanistan
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,660905,00.html
"To make up for a lack of manpower in the fight against the Taliban, the Afghan government has encouraged the formation of armed militias in Kunduz Province. But German soldiers fighting in the area are unsure how to deal with these roving bands of guerillas fighters."
Maybe we should let the Afghans sort it out.
Thank you.
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