Lawmakers: Afghan leader threatens to join Taliban
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9ET066G0&show_article=1
The Obama administration is such a total disaster with regard to foreign affairs that it is becoming increasingly hard to pick the single greatest failure. However, for my money, Afghanistan has a definite shot at first prize. Bush conquered Afghanistan in about three weeks. (Remember the Soviets failed after eight years.) The Karzi government took power. And although they were far from perfect, they did kinda like us. Bush kept Afghanistan under control for over six years, with minimal involvement by U.S. troops. The Taliban and al Qaeda were trapped in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were still eager to kill us, but being trapped in caves and rat holes diminished their ability, along with a loss of prestige.
So, the terrorists decided to move the front line on the war to Iraq. Brilliant! They moved away from some of the most rugged terrain on earth to flat open desert. High-tech equipment works really well in the flat desert. That is why the vast majority of people who volunteered to attack us in Iraq are now learning, first hand, the truth about the alleged 12 virgins in paradise.
We were winning in Iraq, and Afghanistan was basically a mess, but not really a threat to anyone. Enter the Annointed One. This, of course, was unacceptable. Changes had to be made. Even though Obama had absolutely zero military experience, he announced that he was going to focus on winning the necessary war in Afghanistan. He sends in thousands of new troops. To make it even better, Obama demanded politically correct rules of engagement. Our enemies will love us because it makes it harder for us to kill them, but makes it easier for them to kill us. This is definitely the way to win the hearts and minds of the population. I mean, would you rather side with the U.S. where the Taliban will definitely kill you, or with the Taliban where the U.S. will try desperately to make sure you don’t get hurt? It also was embarrassing to discover that the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan was made more difficult by the simple reality that Bush had killed most of them. It is somewhat harder to make a war on people who are already inconveniently dead.
The Obama administration quickly decided that the secret to success in Afghanistan was not through military force, but rather to increase the efficiency of the Afghan government and hold it accountable. He explained this to Karzai. (I want you to get more of your people killed, so our guys won’t be at risk. By the way, eventually we will abandon you.) The U.S. developed a brilliant strategy to accomplish this goal. They made public announcements expressing doubt that the Afghanistan government was really up to the task. Obama even decided to send in James Carville, as political advisor to the opposition leader in Afghanistan. What a brilliant way to win support from the current guy in power, fund his opposition. (However, sending in an idiot like Carville may actually have been a material factor in assuring Karzai’s ultimate victory.) In spite of our best efforts to get Karzai defeated in an election, he still won. So, naturally, we demanded a new election under rules carefully designed by us to help the other guy win. This failed miserably, and the other guy withdrew before the election. To rub salt in the wound, when President Karzai called Obama to announce the election results, Obama stiffed him and refused the call. Then he sends Rahm Emmanuel out on the Sunday Morning talk shows to solemnly declare that we are not sure we have a reliable partner in Afghanistan. Nice vote of confidence that!
Karzai, unlike most Democrats, appears to have a brain. He figured out that Obama tried desperately to remove him from power. It is clear that Obama is setting him up to fail by saying the success of failure of the war depends on Karzai, someone he despises. And, by the way, we are tired of our troops getting killed, so we want you to use Afghan troops instead so they can get killed, and we can reduce our casualty counts. And, oh, we have great new rules. Winning the hearts of the people is so much more important than winning military battles that we have great new rules of engagement. Now, we can’t actually shoot people unless they shoot at us first. If we spot them with an aircraft, we must buzz them to give them a warning so they have a chance to hide or escape. If they have any civilians with them, we can’t risk firing back if there is a chance of civilian casualties. This is working really well. We all know that people like the Taliban wouldn’t even consider using women and children as human shields. Of course not!
Well, surprise, surprise! Karzai is having some problems running the country. And, he now believes that the U.S. government is not only not his friend, instead it is out to destroy him. Just yesterday he announced that he is seriously considering joining forces with the Taliban. Nice! This will really help.
Don’t be surprised if the U.S. government decides that the Afghan government they deliberately undermined is unable to govern. Perhaps it’s time for the CIA to step in and remake the Afghan government in our own image. This reminds me of when the CIA overthrew the Diem government in Vietnam. This replaced a brutal dictator, who was successfully killing communists, with a long list of people who never came close to gaining the support of the people. The problem is that just because these leaders were put in power as puppets of the United States, the Vietnamese people tended to view them as puppets of the United States. Removing Diem accomplished great things. It removed someone who was effectively keeping the Viet Minh and the NVA at bay, with only about 15,000 U.S troops, and replaced him with a long line of clowns who couldn’t accomplish this in spite of the support of nearly 500,000 U.S. troops. By the way, Diem was assassinated after a Coup D’Etat funded with $40,000 by the CIA, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated.
This is also similar to Carter’s brilliant strategy in Iran. Even though the Shah was a good friend of the U.S, he was a nasty guy when dealing with Muslim insurgents. Why he actually treated these people like terrorists! How bad was that? Carter became convinced that the Shah had to go and ultimately, he did fall. Obviously, the Iranian people are thrilled with wonderful freedom they have received under the Sharia law of the Islamic Republic. We may never know the full story, but we sure know what the Shah said about it:
“I did not know it then – perhaps I did not want to know – but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted … What was I to make of the Administration’s sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran? Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.” – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran
Perhaps Karzai is smart enough to do some historical research and observe that the U.S. has a sad history of throwing our friends under the bus of political correctness. It is clear that Afghanistan is going to go in one of two directions very rapidly. Either, the U.S. will greatly expand its presence and take over the government, or, we are likely going to find our troops fired upon by both sides. Nice work there, BO!
TDM