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By Joe Klein | @JoeKleinTIME | December 15, 2010 | +

Hamid Karzai as a runner-up Person of the Year.

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  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    For some reason this phrase stood out for me.

    after Afghanistan’s neighbors — and the NATO coalition — chose to install him as leader in December 2001

    Could that be part of the problem?

  • freeinpa

    2008 Time Person of the Year- Obama
    2009 Time Person of the Year – Bernacke

    .
    Karzai breathing a sigh of relief for being runner-up. Obama now at low after November wipeout and Bernacke taking heat and calls for end of the Fed.
    .
    Feel sorry for Facebook as the Time Contrary Indicator will exact its toll.

  • http://ericychan.wordpress.com ericychan

    Given the fact that the remnants of central government died late 1991 there wasn’t much of a choice.

    An election would have been impossible in the chaos of Dec 2001, so the other alternative would have been a US caretaker government until an election was held.

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  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    The current Afghan war seemed not at all obscure, at first. It seemed crucial to U.S. national-security interests: a lightning ouster of the Taliban government that had harbored Osama bin Laden as he planned the Sept. 11 attacks. But the war slowly became the same old Afghan snake pit — a sapping struggle, largely an Afghan civil war, with no clear end in sight.
    -
    Also, if memory serves, we might have we invaded another country sometime around then, thereby failing to dedicate the necessary resources to Afghanistan.
    -
    But the corruption was less troubling, in a way, than Karzai’s steady drift toward anti-American rhetoric.
    -
    LOL. Let’s just occupy ‘em for another decade, surely they will love us by then!

  • stuartzechman

    Joe Klein:
    .
    If we accept for a moment that “the U.S. had made a moral commitment to Afghanistan,” then why would you also claim that “the corruption was less troubling, in a way, than Karzai’s steady drift toward anti-American rhetoric?”
    .
    If we’re even partially there because of some moral duty to militarily occupy these people for their own good, why would the documented campaign of corruption undertaken by the leader that “Afghanistan’s neighbors — and the NATO coalition — chose to install” be less troubling than comments critical of the American occupation?

  • http://jcapan.wordpress.com jcapan

    “But the corruption was less troubling, in a way, than Karzai’s steady drift toward anti-American rhetoric.”

    Yes, how ungrateful. When puppets turn on their patrons, when their shilling becomes less reliable, it is just so inconvenient.

    And why anti-American rhetoric would exist in Afghanistan, of all places, is a mystery.

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