We have another encouraging statement from our ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai who told Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Western officials in Kabul that one of his greatest enemies is the United States and that he wished he had gone with the Taliban when he had a chance. Previously, if you recall, Karzai stated that he wanted to actually join the Taliban in fighting the United States, so this is just a reminder.
So, just to keep track, our loss of life and limb in Afghanistan is sharply increasing. We have burned through hundreds of billions of dollars in this war as our cities and states are cutting back on public education, parks, and basic services. Yet, we continue to sacrifice our soldiers and treasure in a country where the President is a corrupt lunatic who dreams of joining the Taliban and killing U.S. troops. Of course, he will first have to find one. Recently it was disclosed that our geniuses in the CiA and military have been negotiating with a perfect fraud — a man who falsely claimed to be “Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour,” one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement. In addition to giving him a fortune, he was flown to meet with Karzai and our top commanders. The U.S. now says that he was just a guy trying to make some cash.
In his latest diatribe, Karzai said his three “main enemies” – the Taliban, the United States and the international community. Then added, “If I had to choose sides today, I’d choose the Taliban.”
The problem is that many are saying that the Taliban are winning — in part because of Karzai’s corrupt and inept government. Why should they want Karzai? They would much prefer that we carry him. He has proven one of their greatest assets.
In the meantime, we continue to substitute ideological allies with openly corrupt officials — corrupted by the CIA itself.
Afghanistan has become an example of “path dependence” in economic theory — we have invested so much on this gambit that we cannot get ourselves to consider changing course — or at least no politician is willing to take responsibility for such a decision. The result is that we our losses mount as a lunatic leader fantasizes of joining the enemy. The only good thing is that we must be confusing the hell out of our allies, but I know I am confused.
By the way, our latest published loss was Lance Cpl. Michael Geary, 20, of New Hampshire. Geary had wanted to be a marine since he was 14. He fought the Taliban while Karzai routinely call him the enemy and expresses his desire to join the men who killed him. While Karzai debates what side he is on, Geary’s mother has to deal with the loss of this wonderful son as well as losing her job shortly before Thanksgiving and the recent death of her mother from a long battle against lung cancer. I can only imagine what she is thinking when reading these statements from Karzai. I cannot imagine a more tragic series of events for this poor lady. Obviously, Michael did not die for the likes of Karzai and his lack of appreciation does not reflect the sympathy of all Americans for her and her family. Reading about Michael was very hard – he was clearly a very special person who was a credit to both his family and his country.
Source: Washington Post
Jonathan Turley
Blouise,
thanks! I am not sure about the quiet part, but home would be nice.
Former Fed,,
I am sorry about your brother. Thanks to him and you and your family for their service.
Anon nurse,
A nap does sound good, if I didn’t have so much work to do.
rafflaw,
May he return safe and sound to the arms of his family and a quiet evening alone with his father.
The YouTube video is a brief tribute to former (there is *never* an ex-Marine) current, and deceased Marines like Lance Corporal Mike Geary who knew they stood a good chance of dying while standing for honor regardless of–and often in spite of–the corrupt governments they might be supporting in an effort to help civilians, foreign and domestic, live in peace.
As a kid, I too wanted to be a Marine once I heard that rousing Marine Corp anthem, although since my grandfather in WW1 to my father and my uncles in WWII/Korea, and my brother (Green Beret/Army Ranger Officer, KIA in Laos) I served in the Army.
eniobob
1, December 17, 2010 at 9:35 am
Schwarzenegger saying “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
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Ain’t that the truth!
anon nurse:
“So true. And our house is a mess…”
The way things are shaping up,we may look back a year from now and say those were the good ole days.
Buddha,
“If the complaint is corruption and malfeasance, nothing – I repeat nothing – will get better until America cleans up her own house first.”
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So true. And our house is a mess…
anon nurse,
Actually I was but the messenger. The man who said that to me was my high school computer science teacher. He was also responsible for this bit of wisdom: “To err is human. To really screw something up you need a computer.”
Buddha Is Laughing
1, December 17, 2010 at 10:38 am
raff,
I have no problem with that. We as a nation can multitask. We just need to will to get the job done.
11 rafflaw
1, December 17, 2010 at 11:44 am
Buddha,
It seems the “will” is the hard part!
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Buddha and rafflaw,
Yes, we need to find the will… and the will is the hard part…
(and all I want to do is take a nap)… Buddha, wasn’t it you who said, “When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap.”
I’ve never been more worried for our country. If we don’t find a way to turn it around, I don’t even want to imagine…
Buddha,
It seems the “will” is the hard part!
raff,
I have no problem with that. We as a nation can multitask. We just need to will to get the job done.
By the way, I have forgotten it twice. My heart and prayers go out to the Geary family for their son’s ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. He will never be forgotten by his fellow Marines or us. Semper Fi.
Buddha,
You are right that we have to clean up our own house, but while we are doing that, let’s get rid of Karzai.
Mespo,
I loved the Charge of the light brigade! Great lines.
Frank, et al,
What seems so obvious to us seems so unthinkable to those at the top.
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., sayeth, “Insanity is believing that anything can ever actually (as contrasted with hypothetically) be done more than once.”
As I cannot fault my stupidity, from whence could I fault the stupidity of anyone else?
I understand that my wife’s and my former grandson is now among the U.S troops in Afghanistan.
From the writings of Dr. Abraham A. Low, “You are–and everyone seems to be, a dual personality with a dual viewpoint. AT times you advance the subjective viewpoint and become emotional and temperamental; at other times the objective viewpoint is favored and emotion and temper are controlled. ‘It all depends on the way you look at things,’ and your temper will have free reign if you cultivate the subjective way of looking at things while it will be kept in reasonable control if the objective view of things is given the right of way.” (Abraham A. Low, “Peace Versus Power in the Family,” Willett Publishing Co, Winnetka, IL, 1967, page 152)
Also from Dr. Low, “Lillian’s behavior was governed by two contradictory wills, the one group-oriented and the other starkly individualistic. This accords with what I have stressed repeatedly, namely, that in this imperfect world of ours, there is no purity of character, personality and will. The average human being who is neither saintly nor heroic nor angelic, is served by two wills, ruled by two characters and obsessed by two personalities. The average person is [italics on] dual, [italics off] not [italics on] unified.” (Abraham A. Low, “Selections from Dr. Low’s Works (1950-1953),” Recovery, Inc., Chicago, 1966, page 17)
I find that I am not a member of the class of “average people” who are dual; I am, so I observe, a member of the (miniscule?) class of non-average people who are unified.
It is my nearly lifelong observation, as one not of divided will and duality of personality, that divided and dual personality people tend to be internally at war with themselves and have a curious proclivity to project their inner divided state upon all that comes to their attention, including someone similar to me in the sense of being a unified (not dual and/or divided) person.
As I am not at war with myself, so I am not at war with any aspect of existence.
Did someone once say something to the effect that a house divided against itself cannot stand?
I know and I understand the way of being unified person, and I know this and I understand this because I live it.
It is “bloody difficult” (pardon my English) to communicate what I know and what I understand in the language of “the average person” as Dr. Low intended the term, because that language appears to me to have been as though designed and developed specifically to preclude anything useful I could ever say or write in “the language of the average person.”
“The average person” is a hypothetical, not one jot more real or actualizable than the hypothetical “reasonable person” of the tradition of torts. There has never been an actual (not exclusively hypthetical) “average person” any more than there has ever been am actial (not merely abstractly hypothetical) reasonable person in the contemporary traditional legalisticalismish sense.
Believing only in the impossible appears to me to utterly prohibit believing in the possible.
Karzai must think he’s bullet proof, but can you fault his stupidity and arrogance when we’ve let Bush and Cheney walk free? If the complaint is corruption and malfeasance, nothing – I repeat nothing – will get better until America cleans up her own house first.
Schwarzenegger saying “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
Blood and treasure, blood and treasure. I resent the treasure being squandered but what is unconscionable to me is the blood, it’s the most precious treasure of all and it’s being spent for political lies and hubris.
The greatest act of support for the troops in my opinion (and Im not a ‘support the *anything* no matter what’ kind of person) is to just have them ALL home within the next 60 days. We evacuated the troops from Vietnam in about 30 days so it can be done and needs to be done with all haste. It’s long overdue in fact.
That includes no phony distinction between combat troops and security/training forces and private contractors paid by the government. Everyone in uniform and the contractors stop getting paid simultaneously.
We haven’t “won”, we aren’t going to “win” and “win” isn’t even defined, except to whatever extent the Administration throws up an ever-shifting goal to justify the then-current political aim of remaining. Just get them the hell O U T. That takes care of our troops, our treasure and the corruption in Kabul.
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
My son served there in 2003-04 and worked at times with Mr. Karzai’s “milk brother’. The stories of graft and corruption he tells would curl your hair. He does not blame them for the disaster there though. He believes that we were well on our way to a corrupt but stable 3rd world country until we stopped putting in the effort there so we could screw up Iraq.
The question now is not if but when. There will be a last man – or woman – to die for these mistakes but American will hardly notice.
Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson
As a father with a Marine son currently serving in Afghanistan, it pains me to see this miscreant in power. It isn’t the first time we have dealt with corrupt public officials, but for this excuse for a human being to publicly state that he wishes that the Taliban were in power is more than just an affront. It is a direct slap in not just the US government’s face, but a slap in the face of all those Marines and Army and Navy and Air Force personel who have served, been injured or have made the ultimate sacrifice. Maybe it is time for us to install new leadership at the top? We basically put this bum into his position. Let’s see how long he survives without American and NATO forces and American dollars. Then let’s see how he likes the Taliban. Disgusting, ungrateful idiot.