White House Giving Karzai Six Months To Shape Up

New York Times:

With the White House's reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan's suddenly moot presidential runoff, President Obama now faces a new complication: enabling a badly tarnished partner to regain enough legitimacy to help the United States find the way out of an eight-year-old war.

It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai's forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Antifascist-08]

Pipelines, drugs and international intrigue.

Yes, we are smack in the middle of another fiasco.

get our troops out, ASAP.

[rf dude]

He might be Karzai, but he's not Crazy...

[SolarArray]

Six months or what? A nasty letter?

[AirViceMarshalPark]

Worse than that, every US heroin addict will go cold turkey for 12 hours. That will cost Karzai millions and the opium drug lords will have his head.

We start with a nasty postcard to that effect and a certified letter to follow.

Is Teddy Roosevelt's DNA replicable?

[AirViceMarshalPark]

Good morning, V-I-E-T-N-A-M!

Ho Chi Minh was stunned when the US didn't back his revolt against French colonialism. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were some of Uncle Ho's heroes and he was emulating the Americans of 1776. Only after we spurned him did he fall into the hands of international Communism and became a pawn in the Cold War.

[Ventura Co California]

If you can't back up your words the middle east will consider you weak. Talk only goes so far.

[duxguts]

Or what, tell him we might back the other side in Afghanistan's civil war?

[AirViceMarshalPark]

"Or what, tell him we might back the other side in Afghanistan's civil war?"

Think about it. The "other side" would, most certainly, wipe out the opium poppy business and the drug lords in Afghanistan in about one month. The supply of heroin in the US would completely dry up about a month after that.

If the Taliban would agree to moderation acceptable to international law and moral concepts, what do we lose in accepting them into the community of nations as the legitimate government of miserable Afghanistan?

Nothing is worse than the drug lords we now defend with American blood.

[holeybuybull]

We, the CIA, are the "drug lords". Just like our time in Nam, when we were after the heroin of the Golden Triangle.

[larry278]

What happens if Prez K... doesn't shape up in 6 months? JFK, et al killed 'Nam's Prez Diem. Will Prez Obama emulate JFK & LBJ?

[Ergon]

And we want the settlements sorta frozen, at your earliest convenience, Mr. Karzayahu :)

[lungfish]

Very similar to the approach towards holding Bushco accountable for their crimes... and Karzai was a Bush appointee.­..

Mission Accomplished!!! (visualize Bush' smiling face giving a thumbs up while in that ridiculous jumpsuit)

[patrob]

Someone explain to me how this suppose to get turned around in 3-6 months. here's what goin to happen, in 3-6 months if afghanistan is so called stable then we can send more troops and if not well we'll need to send more troops to help stabilize the afghan government. Why are we doing Vietnam all over again why. We're nation building and propping up governments, how about we take our ass home and leave people alone for once.

[PaxEterna]

That would be 6 months PLUS 8 YEARS!

Disgusting . . . .

[Chili4me]

This administration is silent when it should speak, and speaks when it should be silent.

[KIVPossum]

What'll we do in six months? Put him on double secret probation?

[Chili4me]

ROFLMAO!!!

[vascopyjama]

Or have Hillary move in with him.

[holeybuybull]

Where have I heard this "six months" thingie before? Where did I hear that being president was "hard work", as Obama has referred to bringing about "change"? Sounds like someone's recycling phrases from the previous maladministration.

[nexxtep54]

Amazing that Karzai gets six more months when the prior government got carpet bombing. Of course none of them had near so sporty a hat.