Published: 15 November, 2009, 13:49
Edited: 7 May, 2012, 21:23
What is happening in Afghanistan is both a tragedy and a farce.
NATO, the elite club of the Western world, is trying to pacify and westernize a poor and fairly remote country.
And failing miserably in the process.
Even more importantly, instead of pacifying the Afghans, everybody in the pacifying corps seems to be fighting everybody else by now.
The Americans are sniggering at the Europeans, civil reconstruction teams at the military, and special forces at the regular army
Not to be outdone, Karl Eikenberry – the US ambassador to Afghanistan – is now attacking the US commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Eikenberry, a recently retired Lieutenant-General himself, used to have McChrystal's job of running the war himself – for a full 18 months.
So, while McChrystal says "send" to Obama – Eikenberry says "don't".
40,000 soldiers – and their families – are in suspense, waiting. Ever tried a life of suspense; never knowing whether the next night you will be sleeping in your own cozy bed or at some firebase charlie somewhere in the mountains of Kunar? Try and see what it does to your morale.
By the way, the most conservative estimates put the price of having one US soldier in Afghanistan – clothed, fed, armed and ready – at 250,000 US dollars a year. 40,000 extra soldiers would cost another 10 billion dollars.
The kind of diplomat Eikenberry is becomes evident from a piece of news that oddly went largely unnoticed when it appeared in McClatchy Newspapers on Thursday.
Allegedly, the US ambassador presented Hamid Karzai with a list containing some 40 names – 40 Afghans that the Obama administration considers “competent and clean” enough to be appointed to positions of power.
Basically, a newly re-elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a sovereign state, a member of the UN, etcetera, etcetera, is free to choose his cabinet – as long as the names are drawn from that list of 40.
You see, as Henry Ford used to say back in the day, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it’s black.”
So we do have clear progress in allowing other people to do what they want to do.
Strangely, Karzai seems to have an issue with such a progressive move and, again according to McClatchy, flat refused to put up with the demands.
So touchy those foreign presidents are.
And they did not even say anything about the color of the car he drives…
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