If Hamid Has Lost Confidence Why Haven't We? Posted by Michael Cohen

Over the past year of writing on the US war in Afghanistan I don't think I've come across a crazier, more game-changing article than Dexter Filkins piece in Friday's New York Times (the quote below is from Amrullah Saleh, the recently departed Afghan intelligence chief).

“The president (Hamid Karzai) has lost his confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country,” Mr. Saleh said in an interview at his home. “President Karzai has never announced that NATO will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn’t trust it is working."

 . . . The Americans and their NATO partners are pouring tens of thousands of additional troops into the country to weaken hard-core Taliban and force the group to the bargaining table. Mr. Karzai appears to believe that the American-led offensive cannot work.

This really is as far down the rabbit hole as we can get in Afghanistan. Consider for a moment that the US mission in Afghanistan is oriented around the goal of extending the legitimacy of the Afghan government. And yet that same government believes this mission is, in fact, a doomed exercise.

Contrast, for a moment, Filkins reporting with the words of Frank Ruggiero, the senior United States Embassy official in the south, who speaking of the upcoming Kandahar action (offensive is no longer the operative word) said that its goal is:

To make sure “the government at the most basic level, the district level, is able to provide some services so that people who are sitting on the fence are able to say, well, the government has something to offer.”

But what if the Afghan government has nothing to offer - something, by the way, which has seemed fairly clear for several years now.

And if, as the article argue, Karzai wants to strike a deal with the Taliban or even, rather amazingly, the Pakistanis than why aren't we laying out the red carpet for him? Make a deal Hamid; tell the Taliban they can't allow any al Qaeda in Afghanistan; and then let the US get the hell out.

But at this point if Filkins reporting is even half correct how is it possible for the United States to possibly justify any further military engagement in Afghanistan? How can sending even more troops into Kandahar be justified in any way shape or form? Quite simply, it can't.

And per my TNR article on Friday, if there is any progressive blogger out there still on the fence about  speaking out and urging the President to change course in Afghanistan this article is your permission slip.
There exists at this moment a unique and transformational opportunity to apply political pressure on this White House to call off this ridiculous offensive in Kandahar and salvage what has become an incoherent and disastrous policy in Afghanistan.

It just needs a push . . . .

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