“He’s prone to tirades. He can be very emotional, act impulsively. In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan’s most profitable exports,” said Galbraith, in an apparent reference to opium or heroin. – Peter Galbraith
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As if our challenges with Pres. Karzai aren’t bad enough, the latest charge from Peter Galbraith, who made the rounds yesterday, is enough to make you understand why the guy got canned. His animus towards Pres. Karzai is palpable.
Whether the swirling rumor about Karzai doing drugs is true or not, he’s certainly nervous about something, having blurted out a threat about joining the Taliban not long after Pres. Obama made a trek to his country. The reactions from everyone in the press about Galbraith’s comments are priceless and they did the trick. They got everyone’s attention.
Practically speaking on policy, Obama’s summer insurgency plans are going to go south before they get started if he doesn’t have a reliable partner to coordinate the mission this summer.
I’ve been a stalwart supporter of Obama’s Afghanistan plans, though Karzai’s corruption in fixing the election dimmed my enthusiasm by about half, with this latest public tangle truly troubling.
It’s more likely Mr. Galbraith, who I have never met, was brandishing rhetorical barbs to further damage the Afghan troublemaker who wants to blame everyone but himself for the mess he’s made of an amazing opportunity the U.S. has provided.
I can only imagine what Joe Biden is saying to Obama after he got a load of Galbraith’s wild accusations, as Mr. Biden was never too keen on the Afghan plan in the first place.
On the one side we had Hillary and the generals who wanted what—-75,000 additional troops sent into Afghanistan? On the other side we had Biden and the rest of the sane people who wanted zero (0) additional troops sent in. So Obama, who always splits the difference on every issue like a modern day Solomon, sent in an additional 30,000 troops. Turns out that Biden who knew that Karzai was a loser, that the war was, and is, a loser was correct and Hillary and the generals were wrong again. But it gets worse. The people of Kyrgyzstan, where the USA has a huge military supply base that supplies our troops in Afghanistan, are in open revolt against their government. Afghanistan is a fiasco. Anyone who supported escalating this war had a very shallow understanding of this part of the world. They would mostly be capitalists out to make a quick buck, Zionists who hate everybody and everything not Zionist and regular old idiot neocon warmongers. Peace
Anyone who supported escalating this war had a very shallow understanding of this part of the world.
You are simply misinformed, as there were many knowledgeable experts who believed Obama’s decision was the right one. I talked to or heard many speak on the issue over the last year.
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/10/03/david-loyn-biden-plan-crazy-and-morally-reprehensible/
That’s not to say there were any palatable options after Bush-Cheney in this region. What Obama-Biden have done in Pakistan is real progress.
You may believe that they are “knowledgeable experts” but that’s a very odd thing to call people who have been so very wrong about the best way forward in Afghanistan. I would suspect that these were some of the very same people who were also wrong about invading and occupying Iraq? Switching the subject to Pakistan. Whether or not we have made any real progress in Pakistan time will tell. My advice to all of these so-called “experts” is to get every last American troop out of this region now. Then maybe, just maybe, we can begin to make real progress on multiple fronts simultaneously. Peace
Have you ever been to Afghanistan? Or have you regularly sought out experts, on both sides, on the subject of the war and rebuilding there?
A very shoddy attempt at trying to discredit someone. Peace