Afghanistan’s Failures Are Not The Fault Of Its President

In Defense of Hamid Karzai

Our government is in a quandary over what to do about Afghanistan.  They tried unsuccessfully for several weeks to oust Hamid Karzai. This article provides important background on why it is good that our government failed in it’s attempt.

We need leadership in Washington that will look at the facts before dumping allies.

In the matter of Hamid Karzai (this would be the feckless, warlord-backed, corruption-tainted and dubiously re-elected president of Afghanistan), it’s wonderful to observe how he has single-handedly created a new designation in the American ideological lexicon: the neo-neocon.

Who are the neo-neocons? They’re a bipartisan, single-issue group that has recently discovered the virtues—nay, the necessity—of clean, orderly, democratic governance.

On the left, they are the same folks who enthusiastically supported the Oslo Accords that brought about Yasser Arafat’s violent and kleptocratic rule. They were no less enthusiastic about underwriting the enterprise with billions in foreign aid, even as evidence accumulated that the money was being put to every use except improving the life of Palestinians.

These historical precedents are worth recalling because they are the templates of the kind of governance Afghans can reasonably expect. Would they have done better under Mr. Karzai’s main challenger in the last election, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah? Maybe, but Dr. Abdullah is half-Tajik. And the brute reality of Afghanistan is that it would be even more difficult to govern under a non-Pashtun president, since Pashtuns are half the Afghan population and most of the trouble.

No wonder, then, that the announcement of Mr. Karzai’s re-election was greeted in Kabul with “a collective sigh of relief,” as the Washington Post reported last week. “I think people were fed up with this controversy over the election,” the Post quoted a running mate of Dr. Abdullah. “I think it’s a good thing that this is finished. Whether it’s legal or not, we can stop discussing this matter. Now he’s elected.”

Full article here

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Congress, Foreign Policy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm and is filed under National Issues, The U.S. Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.