Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Hyman Roth Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Hamid Karzai is a gangster.

What else can you say about the guy? He goes and basically tries to steal the first round of the Afghanistan presidential election - the UN, NATO and the US freaks out and demands he stand for a runoff with Abdullah Abdullah (precisely how far do you think John Kerry had to twist that arm to get Karzai to agree to this) so that he will seem like a legitimate and credible leader.

Karzai agrees, but makes perfectly clear that he is simply going to steal the runoff (the announcement last week by the election commission that they would open more polling locations, which the UN had adamantly asked him them not to do was a pretty clear indication). Abdullah seeing the handwriting on the wall, backs out, the Election Commission plays along (stranding yours truly - who was on his way to Kabul - in Dubai) and now every Western leader is falling over themselves to label Karzai the "legitimate" president of Afghanistan.

Karzai played this beautifully. To make matters even better for him the United States expended what little political leverage they have over the guy in getting him to agree to a run-off. How'd that work out?

In fact, you really have to love this quote from today's New York Times story:

President Obama on Monday admonished President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he must take on what American officials have said he avoided during his first term: the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban.

As Mr. Karzai was officially declared the winner of the much-disputed presidential election, Mr. Obama placed a congratulatory call in which he asked for a “new chapter” in the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

What he is seeking, Mr. Obama told reporters afterward, is “a sense on the part of President Karzai that, after some difficult years in which there has been some drift, that in fact he’s going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community’s interest in his country to initiate reforms internally. That has to be one of our highest priorities.”

I'm sure Hamid will get right on that. We Americans are just adorable - adorable I tell you! Along these lines, an additional shout out to Spencer for finding this precious quote from an administration official in another Times story:

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them."

Adorable! Meanwhile before those 3-6 months are up this Administration will have likely decided to send even more troops to Afghanistan (i.e. exactly what Karzai wants us to do) basically erasing whatever leverage we have left over the guy to "seriously address" corruption. Why does anyone in this Administration - after watching Karzai steal an election and play the US and NATO like a fiddle - think he will do anything seriously different going forward, especially when we've offered no indication that we intend to cut him or Afghanistan loose?

Perhaps this should lead to  a recognition that we simply don't have the host country support to do an actual counter-insurgency. I mean if this isn't an indication that those feverish dreams of COIN dancing in the heads of policymakers are have little basis in reality then I give up. How can you fight an counter-insurgency when not only is the Afghan government illegitimate, and incompetent, but seemingly impervious to real NATO and US persuasion?

In the end, It seems to me that if you want to get Karzai's attention the best place to start would be to show him you're actually serious about changing course if change isn't forthcoming.  And along those lines we have one piece of leverage that we can use - the number of American soldiers that we are willing to throw into the fire on behalf of this government. It's about time we used it. It's about the only card we have left.

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President Hamid Karzai, in his first speech since he was declared the winner of the much disputed presidential election, said Tuesday that he wanted to tackle corruption but made no specific commitments to reorganizing his administration.“Afghanistan has been tarnished by administrative corruption, and I will launch a campaign to clean the government of corruption,” he said.
Asked if that might involve changing important ministers and officials, he said: “These problems cannot be solved by changing high-ranking officials. We’ll review the laws and see what problems are in the law, and we will draft some new laws.”

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Asked if that might involve changing important ministers and officials, he said: “These problems cannot be solved by changing high-ranking officials. We’ll review the laws and see what problems are in the law, and we will draft some new laws.”

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Asked if that might involve changing important ministers and officials, he said: “These problems cannot be solved by changing high-ranking officials. We’ll review the laws and see what problems are in the law, and we will draft some new laws.”

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Asked if that might involve changing important ministers and officials, he said: “These problems cannot be solved by changing high-ranking officials. We’ll review the laws and see what problems are in the law, and we will draft some new laws.”

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