The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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April 05, 2010
Hamid Karzai versus the Taliban, or joining them? The US backed weak and seemingly hopelessly corrupt Afghanistan government of Hamid Karzai looks less and less useful to anyone by the day. Indeed, Karzai is so desperate at this point that over the weekend in closed meetings with legislators, he was threatening to absolutely JOIN the Taliban that we (and theoretically he) has been fighting for years, in reaction to pressure from the US and the Obama administration.
As a rightwing nutjob, my first instinctive reaction is to blame Obama for this. President Obama is surely the worst amateur hour in foreign and military policy that we've had since at least Jimmy Carter. Perhaps his heavy handed public and undiplomatic gestures have screwed the pooch with a foreign leader who is obviously in a very difficult situation trying to hold on to authority that he barely ever had over the territory. I mean, Obama and his crew say unbelievably stupid things to and about foreign leaders and policy on a near daily basis. It's just been a few days since Obama himself was publicly suggesting that the British should somehow and for no obvious reason open some kind of negotiations over the Falkland Islands stuff from a quarter century ago. WTF?
Then again, maybe this is not at all fair to Obama. Perhaps this guy is just hopelessly weak and corrupt, and it was just foolishness of the Bush administration to back him in power and hold him there when he doesn't seem like he's ever done us much good. Someway, the US certainly does need to hold whatever government in Afghanistan - especially one that is there in significant part because of our backing - more accountable for helping fighting the jihadists. The Karzai government surely hasn't been a hell of a lot of help. I mean what kind of partner does Obama have to work with here?
This brings me to my second instinctive reaction to this, which is to put these comments entirely on the speaker - and take them at more or less face value. If Karzai makes repeated noises of even talking like he's sympathetic to the Taliban, at this point that is pretty much totally unacceptable. If ol' Al were commander in chief, it wouldn't take very much crap like this to get Karzai and a bunch of his crew killed by big US bombs. What to think?
Perhaps it's just as well that I'm not commander in chief.
