Hamid Does DC
Today is Wednesday, 12 May 2010.
President Hamid Capone of Afghanistan is back in DC to take America for a ride. (Lunch at the White House today!) However, before anyone says “Obama’s Katrina”, let’s recall that it was the Republicans and Bush-Cheney who gave Karzai the car and put him in the driver’s seat.
Karzai, of course, got his political start when the American jihadi Republicans under Reagan used the Afghans as proxy fighters against the Soviet Union. Later he became a Taliban, then refused the post of Ambassador to the United Nations and deserted the Taliban, thinking he was owed a more powerful position. Karzai has been President of Afghanistan, in one guise or another, since 2002.
Karzai and his family are the Gambinos of Afghanistan. His younger brother is de facto ruler of the southern region, and responsible for the family’s opium/heroin business.
Perhaps the central problem of USA/USE involvement in Afghanistan is, as I’ve written before, that once a great power hitches its wagon to a crook such as Karzai, it loses most leverage over him. If worse comes to worse, Karzai simply picks up his marbles (read “Swiss bank account billions”) and deserts into luxurious exile, accompanied perhaps by hundreds of mad-wealthy warlord friends.
Thus, the Obama regime, shackled by the Republican jihadi choice of Karzai, tiptoes lightly: after a few months of brandishing The Big Stick, they’re back to beating him with carrots.
The situation seems increasingly intractable: a “nation” split along multiple fault lines, an infrastructure devastated by three decades of war and dictatorship, and hundreds of thousands making too much money off the misery to want anything to change.
Thank you, Republican jihadi Reagan and friends.
(Gratuitous dig: To the embarrassment of Georgetown University, Karzai was given an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University in 2006.)
President Hamid Capone of Afghanistan is back in DC to take America for a ride. (Lunch at the White House today!) However, before anyone says “Obama’s Katrina”, let’s recall that it was the Republicans and Bush-Cheney who gave Karzai the car and put him in the driver’s seat.
Karzai, of course, got his political start when the American jihadi Republicans under Reagan used the Afghans as proxy fighters against the Soviet Union. Later he became a Taliban, then refused the post of Ambassador to the United Nations and deserted the Taliban, thinking he was owed a more powerful position. Karzai has been President of Afghanistan, in one guise or another, since 2002.
Karzai and his family are the Gambinos of Afghanistan. His younger brother is de facto ruler of the southern region, and responsible for the family’s opium/heroin business.
Perhaps the central problem of USA/USE involvement in Afghanistan is, as I’ve written before, that once a great power hitches its wagon to a crook such as Karzai, it loses most leverage over him. If worse comes to worse, Karzai simply picks up his marbles (read “Swiss bank account billions”) and deserts into luxurious exile, accompanied perhaps by hundreds of mad-wealthy warlord friends.
Thus, the Obama regime, shackled by the Republican jihadi choice of Karzai, tiptoes lightly: after a few months of brandishing The Big Stick, they’re back to beating him with carrots.
The situation seems increasingly intractable: a “nation” split along multiple fault lines, an infrastructure devastated by three decades of war and dictatorship, and hundreds of thousands making too much money off the misery to want anything to change.
Thank you, Republican jihadi Reagan and friends.
(Gratuitous dig: To the embarrassment of Georgetown University, Karzai was given an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University in 2006.)
posted by HH at 9:20 AM
2 Comments:
And what is HH's solution for this situation?
Those musings in the sequel, probably tomorrow or Friday.
Post a Comment
<< Home