Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block Nato offensive

[IndianaGreen]

Source: The Times

From The Sunday Times

April 11, 2010

Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block Nato offensive

Stephen Grey in Kandahar

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over Nato’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.

Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.

Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked.

The elders shouted back: “We are not happy.”

“Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,” Karzai replied.

General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, who was sitting behind him, looked distinctly apprehensive. The remarks have compounded US anger and bewilderment with Karzai, who has already accused the United States of rigging last year’s presidential elections and even threatened to switch sides to join the Taliban.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7094217.ece

---

Instead of escalating the war, Obama should have brought the troops home. Afghans will not roll over like the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. There is a lesson to be learned here!

Listen to the elders!

[ixion]

1. Yes, he should have ended it, and all our other hostile occupations

as well. He still should. There is no winning in such a scenario.

[Bragi]

2. The "summer offensives" rarely accomplish anything anyway

What happens is that the locals move out, along with the Taliban, and the NATO troops invade mostly-empty villages. After Nato Generals do their photo ops, the locals and the Taliban move back in. In a few weeks, NATO troops start getting blown up again by roadside IEDs.

The main difference this time is that Karzai is now openly trying to hedge his bets and cosy up to the Taliban in advance of this offensive.

As the other poster wrote, Obama should have ended this unwinnable war, not escalated it. The best hope now is that, after this new "offensive" Obama will declare "victory". If so, I will be quite happy to celebrate that fiction, as long as it is accompanied by a withdrawal of troops.

As for Afghanistan, once the foreigners leave, the usual band of religious extremists, drug lords and tribal barons who have run the place for the last 200 years will resume running the place right after hanging Karzai from the nearest tree (should Karzai be foolish enough not to take the last helicopter out.)

The only upside from this long war is the new government will have learned not to allow Al Qaeda to operate within its borders, which shouldn't be a problem since AQ already moved out of Afghanistan in 2001-2. AQ has no need to return there, so everyone should be happy.

By everyone I mean, of course, everyone who didn't have a loved-one killed or maimed in this stupid war.

[bemildred]

3. "US anger and bewilderment with Karzai"

A bit of cognitive disconnect among our so-called "leaders"?

[IndianaGreen]

4. Obama Administration suffers from the same hubris as the Johnson Administration did during Vietnam

"The US controls the place by day but the Taliban control it by night. What is the point? If you help the government, you will be murdered."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7094217.ece

Substitute "Taliban" with "Charlie" and you would be describing what we experienced in Vietnam. Afghanistan may not be a carbon copy of Vietnam, but there are strong similarities as to US strategic errors, and the end result will be the same. This begs the question as to why Obama chose not to save American lives by ending the war last year instead of doing an LBJ type of escalation.

[bemildred]

12. Did you know Gen Giap is 100 years old this year?

---

In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, lying in state in his mausoleum, remains revered by all, and the great military commander, General Giap, 100 years old this year, still lives in honour and glory.

There is no counter-narrative that excuses or tries to explain away the actions of the South Vietnamese army and government and their collaborators, who are referred to by the common people as puppets. For a senior puppet leader to be in high honour in government or even in society would be unthinkable.

As we start our war crimes trials, almost 40 years after the fact, it is worth thinking about what the failure to hold them has cost us in terms of forging a unified nation with a unified national narrative and identity. This is another area we could take a page out of Vietnam's book.

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=131591

[IndianaGreen]

13. The only people dying or being injured in Vietnam are those struck by old munitions

unexploded bombs and mines that still litter the landscape decades after the war came to an end.

[tabasco]

31. They forgot to mention North Vietnam's war crimes against the people of S. Vietnam..

Just an oversight, I'm sure.

[No Elephants]

24. Just wave and smile.. Maybe our leaders will be angry enough to evacuate the troops.

[Bette Noir]

5. This sounds like our cue to leave.

Are you listening, Mr. President?

[IndianaGreen]

9. It is our cue to leave

Let's bring our troops home!

[mbperrin]

27. Immediately!

I never wanted to go there in the first place, or Iraq, either.

Imagine spending money on benefits for our own citizens instead of on killing other countries' citizens?



I can dream.

[Bragi]

14. The "cue" came in 2001-2

That was when AQ left Afghanistan and set up shop elsewhere. They had no strategic need to be in Afghanistan after that, but the place continued to hold their interest because it was one of those convenient places where foreign troops, especially Americans, were within reach to blow up.

[No Elephants]

26. We've missed many cues. Let's not repeat that error this time. Let's just take a bow, then bow out

[NJmaverick]

6. Posting right wing propaganda from Ruppert Murdock owned TImes

gets you an unrec. I have already learned an important lesson don't listen to green party members trying to disrupt the Democratic party

[IndianaGreen]

7. Perhaps we should only post White House press releases

and listen only to the Ministry of Truth.

[NJmaverick]

10. what does that rant have to do with you pushing right wing propaganda?

[IndianaGreen]

11. It isn't propaganda if it is the TRUTH! You can't back up your assertion the story is false!

From The Toronto Sun:

After 31 years of conflict, nearly three million dead, millions more refugees and frightful poverty, Afghans yearn for peace.

For the past two years, Karzai and his warlord allies have been holding peace talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.

Karzai knows the only way to end the Afghan conflict is to enfranchise the nation's Pashtun majority and its fighting arm, the Taliban. Political compromise with the Taliban is the only - and inevitable - solution.

But the Obama administration, misadvised by Washington neocons and other hardliners, is determined to "win" a military victory in Afghanistan (whatever that means) to save face as a great power and impose a settlement that leaves it in control of strategic Afghanistan.

Accordingly, the U.S. thwarted Karzai's peace talks by getting Pakistan, currently the recipient of $7 billion in U.S. cash, to arrest senior Taliban leaders sheltering there who had been part of the ongoing peace negotiations with Kabul.

It was Karzai's turn to be enraged. So he began openly defying his American patrons and adopting an independent position. The puppet was cutting his strings.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2010/04/09/13530691.html

[No Elephants]

25. Not to nitpick when you're on a rolll, but propaganda can be 100% true..

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/propaganda

BTW, I never realized what your name meant until now. (Duh!)

[Bragi]

8. Any views or thoughts on the topic?

If not, have a nice day.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sabrina 1]

22. And here's a rec to counter a really, really silly

post. You're slipping.

This is one of the first good things Karzai has done and I hope he stands by it. Of course he may end up dead. His first mistake was thinking that he could trust America to do good for his country while they built their pipe-line and took over and restarted the drug trade.

He learned quickly and saw his countrymen murdered and tortrued and for years has been demanding an end to the killing of civilians.

He went from an oilman thinking he could serve two masters, to a man, whose father was murdered in Afghanistan, who has come to realize that you have to make a choice.

Once he developed a conscience about the killing of his fellow Afghans, it was inevitable that he would be vilified by the U.S.

I actually feel sorry for him now. He should have known better when he signed a deal with the U.S. He should have known that if he ever put his fellow countrymen before the greedy, power-hungry goals of the West, he would be ignored, and smeared and now his own people blame him for participating in the destruction of their country.

He turned out not to be a perfect puppet after all. Seeing all those dead women and children was hard to bear and he spoke up for them. Bush ignored him, and now following in those illustrious footprints, Obama is about to do the same.

I hope he survives. But I have a feeling there is another puppet waiting in the wings in case he refuses to allow yet another slaughter of his countrymen.

[Iowa]

30. And here's a second rec to counter your unrec...

Your unrec actually netted a rec. Good work.

[Dr.Phool]

16. Seems like we've worn out our welcome.

Bring the troops home, and use the money to finance our infrastructure and health care.

[IndianaGreen]

17. Obama's Big New AfPak Problems

Related story:

Obama's Big New AfPak Problems

As President Barack Obama turns his attention to nuclear weapons, his AfPak strategy appears to be going south, even as polling shows his approach to be popular at home. That would be so even if Kyrgyzstan, home to the last remaining U.S. base in Central Asia, had not just experienced a sudden revolution in which the new powers appear to be opponents of the U.S. military presence in their country.

<snip>

Then, appearing with General Stanley McChrystal before 1500 tribal elders, Karzai went so far as to say that he may not support the coming summer offensive in the Kandahar region.

<snip>

And there has been the ongoing problem of civilian deaths in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S. and allied forces. Each death makes the expanded mission there that much less likely to succeed.

<snip>

A revolution in Kyrgyzstan, with all the other headaches surrounding his AfPak strategy, was approximately the last thing Barack Obama needed. He barely kept the Manas air base open last year, increasing U.S. payments to the Kyrgyz government. Now the price will only go up, if indeed there is a deal to be made with the new government when it fully emerges. And we'll see if the country's new leadership will go along with a second U.S. base there, just announced in the last month, a rather hazy anti-terrorism center.

This is all an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to pursue a nation-building strategy, even a limited one, in a country that is highly resistant to nation-building.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/obamas-big-new-afpak-prob_b_529622.html

[Robb]

18. Are you rolling over right now?

:rofl:

[cliffordu]

19. Hasta la vista,

motherfucker. Time to end it. Bring them all home immediately and let this little prick swing.

[naaman fletcher]

20. Karzai is a smart man..

He knows there will not be lasting peace if their are foreign troops in Afghanistan. So, to unite the country behind him, he is trying to be the guy who got the foreign troops to leave. We should oblige him.

[AlphaCentauri]

21. He is just playing double agent

trying to appease the nationalist to stay quite but he would never drop the US patronage

[No Elephants]

23. Hamid, it's been real, but we must we must be going now--and taking our troops and aid with us.

Have fun in Paradise!

[Hubert Flottz]

28. Hazmat Carbide is one of George and Dick's booby traps...

left for the next president to be tripped up by. They have a spare room at Gitmo for more Taliban cronies...

[Knight Hawk]

29. 1886

"No proposition Euclid wrote,No formulae the textbooks know,Will turn the bullet from your coat,Or ward the swordsman's downward blow.Strike hard who cares-shoot straight who can-The odds are on the cheaper man." Rudyard Kipling in 1886 on the futility of the Brits being in Afghanistan.