High! Are You Happy?
High, perhaps, on his brother's reputed opium stash. And feeling pretty feisty. Also feeling unappreciated. This is one hombre who does not appreciate being boxed in. Yes, he most certainly likes his day job, and his night job, too. He's willing to compromise, but that compromise is being offered to let's say, the wrong people...? They're the ones he's entreated NATO and other foreign allies to remain in his country to ensure that he will be able to continue as president.He's quite happy, thank you, in depleting the treasuries of those other countries, contrite that they're losing the lives of their robust young soldiers, grateful that they're engaged in helping to build needed civic infrastructure, but mad as hell that they're killing Afghans through errant strikes while aiming to take out the Taliban. And he won't take it any more. He's said that repeatedly over the years, that he will not have his people killed.
The Taliban have themselves not bothered much about killing their own, when they haven't been sufficiently forthcoming as to align themselves wholeheartedly with their insurgent agenda, but that, of course, is a family, tribal thing. Not the same as foreigners barging in and doing that kind of horrible stuff. And we won't even discuss some of the blood still dripping on the hands of some of Hamid Karzai's advisers.
Or brother Ahmed Wali Karzai's sturdy opium trade, vitalizing the world (victimizing Russia primarily) with an over-ample stock of opiates, the better to fund the Taliban, and just incidentally some of the war lords currently established within the Afghan Parliament. Mr. Karzai does not take lightly accusations levelled against him by foreign elements of corruption, a condition that they find unacceptable.
Above all, he finds it grievously untoward that foreign elements accuse him of having conducted a corrupt election to re-elevate himself as president. He's furious enough as it is, so that when his own parliament will not sign off on his self-empowerment to appoint all future election officials, aligning themselves in attitude with the imperialist foreigners, he's prepared to make common cause with the Taliban.
Just kidding, you say. But enjoying tremendously Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-American speech in the Afghan presidential palace. Revenge is sweet, even if short-lived. But in a country like Afghanistan, in a region that encompasses also the Middle East, memories are long and traditions ongoing, and the prevailing zeitgeist has prevailed for so long it is inscribed in the stone of the ages.
And when President Karzai took General McChrystal along with him to visit tribal villages and ask at the loya jirgas whether the elders are happy with the U.S. and allied forces' plans to further and broaden the reach of their government, thus weakening the strongholds of the Taliban and they affirm that may not quite be happy, his alacrity in assuring them that the planned military campaign may not proceed kind of wrenches the works, doesn't it?
Everything that has gone wrong is the fault of the imperialist invaders; it is they who are corrupt, who have brought disaster and chaos to the country. Should those imperialist invaders leave in high dudgeon? He doesn't think so, they are still valuable to him. The continued investment in the country, the ongoing dedication to assist in formulating a more refined civic delivery system has value, among other things.
Will they leave, disgusted at the endemic corruption, the lack of government accountability, the blase attitude of Afghan military and police to help themselves to help themselves? Well, chuckles the president, not likely. There is always that little matter of their own presumed lack of security with the expanding plans and interests of the Taliban studiously mentored by al-Qaeda.
Labels: Conflict, NATO, Political Realities, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 07, 2010
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