generalspeaking

World Class Ingrate, Hamid Karzai

Whoops, there goes another one. And here we thought that military men in the top-ranking echelons were silently obedient to their national administration's world view. Responding to, and respecting the mindset of their commander-in-chief, the President of the United States. They are sworn to duty. To comport themselves in the best traditions of the military, in carrying out the commands of their president.

Supposedly Major-General Peter Fuller did just that. And would do, on the battlefield, just as he has been sworn to do in the newer, training mission. Where NATO has re-dedicated its mission in Afghanistan from one of actively seeking out and confronting a usually-elusive, avid initiator of IED-leading deaths, to attempting to train the Afghan police and military to actually tend to their country's security needs.

However, he has committed the cardinal sin of speaking the truth about the character and loyalty and appreciation level of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. A man reputed to be mentally unstable, and performing often in a manner that seems to confirm that casually-observed diagnosis.

Hamid Karzai does appreciate all the sacrifices that NATO countries have made on behalf of the people of Afghanistan in struggling to keep them free of the anti-humane depredations and human rights violations of the Taliban. He does appreciate the sacrifices in terms of lives lost by NATO allies, and Western treasuries looted in a grand gesture to assist a poor nation.

But not conspicuously appreciative. It is an emotional tap that can be turned on when convenient to do so, and turned off just as abruptly, when testy annoyance reflecting the disagreements that erupt between his warlord-heavy administration with its well-entrenched corruption, and the frustrations of NATO emissaries doing their utmost to provide security and state infrastructure, because he does not.

So Major General Peter Fuller, like General Stanley McChrystal before him, who also incautiously seemed to speak dismissively of the President's Oval Office stalwarts, has been politely invited to return home. Hamid Karzai's flagrant ingratitude to his benefactors overrode Major General Peter Fuller's sense of caution. And he spoke what he thought.

Taking umbrage at Karzai's stated preference to side with Pakistan rather than the U.S. in the (unlikely) event of a conflict, Major General Fuller had declaimed: "Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You've got to be kidding me. I'm sorry, we just gave you $11.5-billion and now you're telling me, 'I don't really care?"

A cardinal sin; Major General Fuller spoke his incautious, injudicious, outraged mind. That the Afghan military whom NATO trainers are doing their utmost to mould into a useful and professional army and airforce, was demanding tanks and fighter jets, as though the U.S. hadn't a thought in the world about its own economic downturn.

"You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish. We're giving them fish while they're learning, and they want more fish! They say, 'I like swordfish, how come you're giving me cod?' Guess what? Cod's on the menu today."

And guess what? Major General Peter Fuller has been relieved of his duties "effective immediately".

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, NATO, Traditions, United States

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 06, 2011