SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Impotent Dictator
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How Many More Must Die for Karzai? “For five years Mr. Karzai was my president,” Ashraf Ghani, an opposition candidate, bemoaned after widespread reports that incumbent Hamid Karzai had used fraud on a massive scale to steal the election. “Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?” Not many. In a country where civil war is the national pastime and five-year-old boys learn how to fire an AK-47, this is not good. But Ghani is asking the wrong question. The real question is, how many Americans will continue to see Karzai as viable–and be willing to continue to pay the price of propping him up? California Senator Diane Feinstein used to support Karzai. “Afghanistan is our beachhead on our war on terror. We cannot lose it, or we lose our war on terror,” she said in 2002. What a difference seven years makes! “I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan,” she finally admitted last…
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