Posted on 11/04/2011 3:57:25 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
WASHINGTON — A top U.S. general in Afghanistan was relieved of duty Friday for "inappropriate public comments" after calling the Afghan government "isolated from reality" and President Hamid Karzai "erratic."
Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander for training Afghan security forces, blasted the Afghan government, military and Karzai in an interview with POLITICO published on Thursday.
He called Karzai "erratic" for recently saying Afghanistan would side with Pakistan if the latter declared war on the U.S.
"Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle!," Fuller was quoted as saying. "You’ve got to be kidding me … I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, 'I don’t really care'?"
Fuller also said he had trouble explaining to Afghan officials that Western funds were limited. "You guys are isolated from reality" he said he told Afghan generals. "If you're in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood."
"I actually had someone senior tell me, 'All I want to do is put them [tanks] on a flat bed and drive them around in a parade'," he added.
Fuller said Afghan leaders "don't understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that's part of my job to educate 'em."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
WASHINGTON — A top U.S. general in Afghanistan was relieved of duty Friday for “inappropriate public comments” after calling the Afghan government “isolated from reality” and President Hamid Karzai “erratic.”
Exactly...time to clear out of this shithole, build the world’s biggest military base in Iraq, which is where we SHOULD have been concentartaing troop strength and let it rip if we have to.
NATO pulls out Karzai is toast , he better hope he has enough money stashed away and a country to to hide in
Fired for committing truth. Another general soon to be retired.
They misunderstood him. He wasn’t talking about Afghanistan and Karzai, he was talking about Barry and US.
A General that talks to Politico isn’t very smart.
Nobody in Uniform,unless he is got 4 stars and a solid ton of dirt on everyone on the pentagon, shouldn’t be talking to the press.
Even General MacArthur was removed in part because of his candid attitude towards the press when it came talking about the President,the actual reason he got dropped had to do with him underestimating the Chinese counterattack but he’d poisoned his relationship with the President long beforehand.
The media is not the friend of the military.
Anyway Gen Fuller is completely correct,Karzai is running his country like a crackhouse and he will get more American soldiers killed because of his tendencies to see American influence as passing and Islamic influence as permanent(both ebb and flow).
We have a great commander in thief don’t we?
Keep shootin' the messengers. That'll fix the problem.
We will be completely out of Iraq by Christmas.
Obama is busy giving up all of our hard work and blood even as we speak.
We had a base in the heart of the middle east.
Obama is making it go away.
Here's hoping he retires & then exposes the farce that is the Afghan War.
Any attempt to creat a single, unified national government in Afghanistan is doomed to failure, no matter who is president. Afghanistan is not, and never will be a nation. It is a handful of city-states, in a sea of independent tribal warriors, whose only loyalty is to the tribe, and only ambition is to be great warriors. Any attampt to enforce a national government on them threatens everything they are, and gives them a chance to become great warriors. If a relatively modern country like Pakistan can’t control their tribal areas, only a moron could believe Karzai and his crew ever will.
I’m sure Karzai and his cronies undstand that and are content to rule in the cities, and take what they can, while they can. The only sane strategy is divide and conquer. Buy off those we can, kill those that help Al Qeada, and leave the rest alone.
“We will be completely out of Iraq by Christmas.”
Heartbreaking for the women and children of that poor country and for the brave men and women who almost liberated them
...time to clear out of this shithole, build the world’s biggest military base in Iraq, which is where we SHOULD have been concentrating troop strength and let it rip if we have to.
Many agree. You are obviously one who recognizes that Iraq was the center of the regional board for us; that in the name of national security we should have continued to maintain a formidable presence. It appears O and his muslim advisors in D.C. did not try at all to maintain a force of any size. Reportedly, they did not engage the Iraqi's in negotiations on the question of immunity and, if I recall correctly, it was this general's request for the size of the remaining security force that O vetoed.
With the clarity of hindsight, it seems we should have stood up a government early on in a way that could have no objection to a continuing effective military presence. The Iragi's will likely soon have a chance to negotiate such a point with Iran.
I guess I would have to fire him, too.
He should have said the Afghan government is “corrupt and inept” and President Hamid Karzai is “a treacherous criminal.”
I have always had trepidation about Unifying Afghanistan.
It is a collection of theifdoms.
Then when NATO took control I knew we really had trouble with ever gaining any ground.
Iraq was different, Mesopatamia has a long history of modern government.
We had that place pretty well sewn up other that Irans meddling.
We did liberate them. They elected a government, we built them an army and police force, and signed an agreement with the Bush adminstration for us to leave by the end of this year. If they throw it all away, well, we can’t stay and babysit them forever. If they harbor terrorists we’ll have to try a different approach.
More importantly it is a clan based, tribal, collection of theifdoms. The last European tribal societies ended about a thousand years ago. The mentalty is so far removed from Western civilization that few people even comprehend the worldview of these people. Even a lot of well meaning conservatives believe that everybody has a yearing for individual libery. They don't understand people who put their identity as part of a clan as more important than an individual, and who are taught from infancy that being a great warrior who protects their tribe is what life is all about. Anyone who tries to change things is the enemy.
As Sun Tzu said, he who fails to understand his enemy will lose every time.
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