Carpe Diem?

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 4:50 PM Share

This New York Times article saying that Afghan President Karzai's brother is on the CIA's payroll strikes me as tantamount to declaring open season on him.

I have a friend who insists that President Obama is actually being very strategic about handling Afghanistan, and points toward the pressures brought on the Karzai family. If so, this story is another brick in the wall.

Department of Defense

EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, AFGHANISTAN, INTELLIGENCE

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NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

5:17 PM ET

October 28, 2009

Certainly there is a strategy =

Karzai is a liability. It is open season now, aren't anonymous sources in the administration great?

Can you follow up with a post on how the message is being promoted to Afghans? It seems a little late in the game for this to effect the run-off election unless it is broadcast from every mosque.

I'm also interested in how Galbraith's causing problems and then resigning from the UN electoral mission relates to the admin's strategy. Was his briefing forwarded to the President?

NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

9:57 PM ET

October 28, 2009

Are you coming around to respecting Obama's process now?

I linked this post in my latest effort, so I won't be bashful about linking to it.

Also, I didn't know it at the time, but Galbraith coincidentally had an Op-ed today on the Afghan elections. I hope "they" are listening.

TOM RICKS

2:51 AM ET

October 29, 2009

NorShot, I am not

Nah, I am not coming around to respecting Obama's process. I still believe that he crossed the deliberation border a couple of weeks ago and now is deep into dithering territory.

But I also think I may be proven wrong by events. It has happened in the past. So I am still listening to friends and others with different points of view.

Thanks,
Tom

ZATHRAS

4:09 AM ET

October 29, 2009

August Surprise

I wonder what Tom Ricks thinks of the idea that the extent of the fraud in last August's Afghan election took the Obama administration by surprise. Obama and his team went into August thinking they had a flawed Afghan partner, and began September trying to figure out how to fix a fatal flaw in their Afghan strategy. It looks to me as if this sent them all the way back to square one.

We could have any amount of brilliant success on the battlefield in the next nine months or so and be right back where we started if the Afghan government can't be made any better than it is now. I think Obama knows this, knew it would be difficult to progress in this area, but was taken aback by the graphic evidence of just how much progress would be required.

NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

4:41 PM ET

October 29, 2009

"Brilliant success on the battlefield"

Just what does that mean? Try to be concrete and specific.

NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

4:39 PM ET

October 29, 2009

Fair enough

But did you call Bush/Cheney leaving a troop request for Afghanistan on their desks for many months dithering as well?

John Stewart has a great bit on Cheney saying when they had a big debate on Afghanistan. It's after the Kerry bit.

6OGUREZ

4:21 AM ET

October 29, 2009

open secret...

Karzai's brother is (one of the) biggest drug lords in the country was something I heard back in '05 and amply quoted in the article.

The trouble is it is now '09 and, while admittedly a complicated relationship (do we pay demons to flip the devils or is it vice versa?), our relationship with Ahmed Wali has permanently damaged US/coaltion efforts to assist Karzai's own regime to reach beyond Kabul.

Even in '05 Afghans know political expediency when they see it. After some relatively violence free '04 presidential and '05 parliamentary elections, Afghans had high hopes that US proclamations for a fair Kabul government would be backed by stamping out the rampant corruption in the Karzai government. That didn't happen, and it would be impossible for an Afghan not to see us just a more sophisticated kind of warlord.

Second, the historical tone here is that Diem was killed in '63 and US involvement in Vietnam intensified less than a year later. At this point people will start drawing the parallels but Karzai being a Pashtun is from the plurality (if not majority) of the Afghan population while Diem, as a Catholic, was a minority in Vietnam. The other major difference is that the 7-year Karzai regime had/will never enjoy the same central authority as the Saigon government in the same timeframe. This is not necessarily a bad thing as Afghanistan's historical governments were strongly decentralized- basically feifdom's that swore fealty and loyalty to whoever sat in Kabul.