Lord knows that I can sympathize with anyone who is angry with the American government over how they have managed the war in Afghanistan, but Hamid Karzai can go to hell:
After leaving office, Karzai won’t go far: The government has built him a house a few miles from the presidential palace.
But before he steps down, Karzai has a few more messages to convey to his American partners. As he escorted two Washington Post journalists out of his office Saturday evening, he said: “To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger.’’
We could have been much better partners, but he owes everything to our government. And he’s been ineffectual, too, and incredibly corrupt. He talks a lot of crap, but let’s see how long he stays in his house near the presidential palace. My guess is he’ll either flee for Europe or he’ll be hacked to pieces within two years.
I’d guess Dubai rather than Europe – he’ll want to stay close to his, er, business interests, and buy his villa someplace where the local rulers don’t much care how he got or expands his ill-gained fortune. Turns out it’s surprising how much money you can make as mayor of Kabul.
And I’d put the over/under at six months, not two years.
Not a chance. Dubai did not allow Musharraf to escape Pakistan. Putin might take him in.
I’m sure Putin would love to have him, given his operational knowledge now of NATO/US troops. Whether he’d be foolish enough to go there is another question. It’s the one country even more universally loathed by Afghans than the US.
We think of the Afghan war as 13 years old. Afghans tend to think of it as over 40 years old, with only the names and alliances changing over time. And they remember who helped put all that misery in motion.
Britain?
That quote was for local consumption. He knows what he owes us, but owing the US is a death sentence in Afghanistan. Especially when the calendar flips.
He is – in the end – more like the mayor of Kabul, less like the country’s president.
Classic Booman doublethink! Keep spilling the electronic ink, buddy! I’m constantly erupting with laughter.
“Karzai should be grateful to us.”
Where to motherf**king begin with our regional Unocal exec?
You’re beginning to sound like John Kerry (don’t get a mild chubby, it’s not a compliment).
This is outstanding stuff, almost Bill Kristolery in its waxen-faced unseriousness.
Two years? I wouldn’t give it two days before the house is car-bombed to smithereens. If I were him, I would be hightailing it out before the US leaves.
Maybe he can split a place with Yanukovych.
In Karzai’s defense, no one in Washington has ever seen him as anything other than an allegorical figure, a sign-function for a position in the American domestic factional struggle. The United States does not and cannot have a “foreign policy”; there is no one in office who knows how to read a globe; every overseas actor is merely a cardboard cutout, a talisman, for a domestic posture.
I’m pretty sure that if Karzai is angry at President Obama, then Obama has done something right.
Karzai’s short-term safety depends on two things: getting the US to actually leave and being anti-American enough to survive long enough to find a good place of exile.
The US, especially the Bush administration, failed him as much he failed them. And not he’s supposed to put together an army that the Afghan economy can’t afford to support.
It seems that the “ungrateful bastard” relationship between Karzai and the US has been mutual for quite some time.
My father a 27 year Veteran had this to say repeatedly about the Middle East area. The Middle East will do nothing but drag down the resources of the USA and chew up our military personnel. These people have been killing each other for generations, Stay the He** out of the Middle East. Leave them alone to enjoy their ingrain hate for one another.
This was his opinion after being over in the Middle East on several missions trying to help by giving emergency supplies of food. I have cleaned up his message quite a bit.
Karzai is in Hell. Isn’t he in Kabul?
Karzai may not even last until the final American is gone. I presume that he’s moved his fortune already. And I bet his brother has plenty of places where he stashed that drug money. It may hurt the Karzais losing their cut of the heroin trade, but it’s the kind of business where careers have a short shelf-life. Getting out is much better than staying in a minute too long. Monzer al-Kassar used to be the top heroin trafficker to Europe and North America in the late 80s and he had a great place in Marabella. Eventually his usefulness was used up.