Posted on 10/23/2011 6:59:26 PM PDT by tobyhill
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country's top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.
The scenario is exceedingly unlikely and appears to be less a serious statement of policy than an Afghan overture to Pakistan, just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.
"If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan," Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. "If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."
He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies. Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The comments set off a firestorm of criticism in the country. Afghan lawmakers argued they were particularly hypocritical coming just weeks after the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
While I am not defending Karzai, or anything he has done or anything he is doing, your statements are mere hyperbole. While anything is possible, neither Karzai's demise nor his safety are absolute or certain, no matter what happens.
I doubt you have more perfect knowledge of the situation or of the future than the rest of us, but most of the rest of us do not make such bold predictions and state them with such certainty. I won't pretend to know Karzai's future for certain; I'll let history write the outcome without my predictions.
No matter how ill any of us feel towards Karzai, the one positive that might be said for him is that there are worse figures than him in Afghanistan who would like to be in Karzai's place.
The Afghan political culture of the last two hundred plus years still sits atop all the modern political changes there of the last fifty years. It remains a country of tribes and villages where both tribal leaders and village elders have the sway of Mafia dons on culture and politics, no matter what political systems get put on top of it all. Just like our Mafia types, violence has always been a part of how the self-appointed village and tribal leaders insure their standing means their decisions will reign in the tribe or in the village. The Taliban didn't invent this, they were and are just more brutal and fanatical with it.
It's easy to attack Karzai for not changing all that, instead of succumbing to being a part of it, yet, short of a massive WWII style total takeover of the country by a few million outside forces (THAT was never going to happen) it is doubtful any Afghan leader was going to change it any time soon.
All that aside, none of it has required Karzai to take many of the "anti-American" positions he has taken (they have been neither in his interest or in the interest of Afghanistan) and none of that has required Karzai to be so inept at geopolitical diplomacy, when Afghanistan needs every friend that wants to be its friend and Afghanistan is only hurt by Karzai playing different friends of Afghanistan against one another.
That's why I say he's "crazy", the corrupt political culture of Afghanistan not withstanding.
The list of things that are certain in this life is short. However Afghan history of 20th and 21st century is full of rulers who didn't leave the office on their own feet. For example:
It's easy to attack Karzai for not changing all that, instead of succumbing to being a part of it, yet, short of a massive WWII style total takeover of the country by a few million outside forces (THAT was never going to happen) it is doubtful any Afghan leader was going to change it any time soon.
True, that is easy. I'm not in Karzai's shoes and I don't know if he is taking the only possible route. However from what is seen from this side of the planet he isn't very successful in whatever he is doing. As I (personally) understand he tries to mend relations with Taliban since Taliban owns half of the country (the entire south) already. But my guess is that his cooperation (however limited) with the Great Satan earned him the black mark already. Forgiveness is not something often seen in those lands.
Is Afghanistan a basket case? Perhaps. However some earlier governments - namely, the socialists - were aggressively promoting progress while busily killing each other. If you look at the reforms of those socialists you will find them quite necessary. In the end the society was taken too far too fast, and it rebelled. The Soviet and the US involvement in the resulting war was actually an "after the fact" melee that hasn't changed much, besides creating Taliban as a fighting force.
Of course that's what I personally think. However implausible that might sound, I may be even wrong :-)
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