Obama’s Afghan Policy–Take One

Karzai only accepts support from warlords who grow daisies, not poppies. This is an outrage.
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Never trust a former oil exec to run a country. This has been well documented. I think the lessons of Afghanistan and the US in allowing oil execs the levers of power will be taken to heart by the rest of the world.

you’re going to have to earn our support.
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Be nice if we had that attitude with all our allies in the region.

It definitely is a subject that falls under the sphere of deviance, but interesting talk the other day over at Radio Opensource. How *about* those Bush careers in the CIA and the poorly-run “extraction industry” companies? How *did* those Bushes so consistently “fall up”?
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Sounds like fringe questions, but legitimate ones that the mainstream press won’t ask (probably for the reasons thoughtfully discussed in Lydon’s interview).

New hires at the State Department have discovered that “Hamid Karzai” translated to Vietnamese is “Ngo Dinh Diem.”

The White House will need to muzzle Hillary as SecState and keep her from blurting out her unilateral positions on important foreign policy matters. If Obama doesn’t think Karzai heads a “narco state,” then HRC can’t publicly state that opinion.

It’s going to be a very entertaining balance of power on FP with Hillary in charge of Foggy Bottom.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Joe: you were rather snazzily dressed for your CNN appearance!
Matt: You must be joking? If the White House wants to muzzle State and Hillary then it will be Bush/Cheney re: Condi all over again. Karzai is a corrupt pol and the Independent is reporting that Karzai has asked for help from Russia- yes Russia – to work on his country’s defense. I am waiting to see what the BBC reports later today. I think Obama will have to direct his cabinet members but not in a puppet master fashion. He simply can’t do everything. If he tries he will end up doing nothing satisfactorily.

Less than 24 hours to go of this 8 year mistake.

” .. and so Clinton was sending a signal: you’re going to have to earn our support. ..”

Deja vu – all over and again.

There goes the chest-thumping, the strutting and the saber-rattling that GWB#43 and Rumsfeld were known for.

In the testimony, she also says “We cannot give up on peace in the Middle East.” Poor, defeatist mental attitude that we do not expect in a “can do” administration.
“Give up”? How about being positive – by giving a target date for peace in the Middle East? After all we, the USA, spend the most in war materiel in that conflict. We, the USA and our citizens, fuel the hostilities and issue the UN vetos in that conflict.

[In fact it may as well be called the USA-Palestinian conflict - that has lasted decades and killed many ..]

I just hate it when Hillary confirms my initial apprehension at her joining the BHO administration. Gone were the days when i self-respecting person would turn down an offer if a conflict of interest may be perceived or may occur. Not Hillary and her good-for-nought philandering Bill. One would think that they are the only Americans left to save civilization.

I agree with sevenoaks about Hillary. One of the big problems with the Bush administration was that neither of the Secretaries had enough leeway to contradict Rummy. First Colin Powell, who was marginalized to a great extent, then Condi, who was such a loyal Bushie that she let Rummy walk all over her. Admittedly Bob Gates is much better, and he even said that the State Department was much too small, but we need to make the State Department bigger and better in the future to prevent this sort of imbalance. And Hillary needs to be a good SecState. I’ll forgive anything else, but not fulfilling her job would be simply inexcusable.

cfukara: I don’t really know how to move forward on Israeli-Palestinian peace, but setting a deadline on a generations’ long conflict seems counter productive. It would be setting up for failure when the target date comes and goes.

Also, she’s still not Sec State yet. Give them some time.

Thank god no one is talking about ending the drug war. THAT would just be crazy, naaaawww better to double down. Look at the success of the drug war in Mexico. And thank you Joe for keeping any discussion of ‘narco states’ devoid of any discussion of ending the drug war which would be irresponsible, because the Drug War just hasn’t really been given a chance to be effective thus far.

“He recalls a young mother he busted who had been working her way through college. “Her boyfriend left her and she was trying to make a better life for herself and raise two children at the same time. All of that was gone now. All of it was gone….When I ask him to give me the positive side of prohibition, Doddridge’s usually soft, thoughtful voice betrays anger. “It’s really helped out the drug cartels. It’s created lots of new jobs, building new prisons, hiring new guards.” Doddridge also decries how, under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the government has enacted laws that ignore the fourth amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.”
http://www.culture11.com/article/36438?from=feature

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cfukara: …giving a target date for peace in the Middle East…
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Or what? It’s not as if the US has the will to cut support for Israel or can enforce its will in Palestine.

Cinci – you know we’re not allowed to question the War on Drugs. Only crazy fringe pothead extremists talk about how hemp is illegal while pharmaceutical companies have our kids all hopped up on Ridlin.

“Bush coddled both Karzai and Pakistan’s late, unlamented dictator Pervez Musharraf…”

Umm, when did Musharraf die?

Hey, Joe-
Seems to me I recall that last year you linked to a fine speech delivered by PEBO on MLK Day — is that link still around somewhere?

Hmmmm, interesting, I’ve always suspected I was a crazy fringe pothead extremist, the wizard bong and the Che poster should have been dead giveaways.
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Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on “officer safety” and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.

And as to why we’re not allowed to question various CWs:

“He[Obama] knew that what Washington pundits really craved was not the truth, but a sense of their own importance. So he let them throw him a dinner party.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5536734.ece

Here we go again. “Karzai had better get cracking” suggested Joe. But, Joe, you completely miss the cultural aspect. I would be ignominious for Karzai to publically condemn his brother. “Narco State” and jailing his brother may be seen as arrogance of the West and may rally Afghans around Karzai. To set an example, we want many of our own brothers to see a judge: W, Dick, Rumm, etc. etc. Diplomacy always takes culture into consideration.

Wow–Former Time guy Matt Cooper at TPM?

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/a-new-day.php

This post suggests that we have learnt nothing and forgotten everything. Why do we have to lose more lives and treasure in Afghanistan when the tribal and factional leaders can’t or won’t come up with measures to govern themselves? I don’t think we will succeed in establishing a stable/viable/strong govt in Afg because there is not one who can offer the kind of leadership that can overcome centuries of mistrust and plain and simple greed. Let’s solve OUR problems here at home. And don’t even talk about Israel and Palestine: we are tilted in favour of israel and the Palestinians are riven in two. We have no credibility in the Middle East: just a lot of dollar IOUs to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

I don’t understand how you can propose to have a reasonable outcome to Afghanistan’s occupation when no one has proposed anything that is as financially profitable as the opium trade. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to change while that remains the most lucrative business to be had in that country.

Still OT — I found a link to last year’s MLK speech, in case anyone else is interested:
http://www.barackobama.com/2008/01/20/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_40.php

Karzai had better get cracking.
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was this a deliberate bad pun?

[...] TO CATCH THIS DRIFT FURTHER READ WHAT I READ [...]

Karzai has too thin a skin or just can’t think on his feet. All he had to say in response was something dismissive about the US “torture state” or “war criminal state” and “narco state” would start sounding a lot better. It will take more than a Secretary of State Clinton or President Obama to restore our moral authority, unless and until they show the world that the rule-of-law and our treaty obligations and Constitution actually mean something, even if it requires prosecuting our own leaders.
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Put that in your pipe and smoke it.