Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
's recent statement that his country would back Pakistain if it went to war with the United States.
That anger over Karzai's remarks is likely to surface when Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Tallyrand...
testifies Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, her first congressional appearance since her trip last week to Afghanistan and Pakistain.
Lawmakers also are expected to press Clinton on the administration's recent decision to temporarily pull its ambassador out of Syria, the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq by year's end and the Paleostinians' push for statehood at the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
over objections from the US and Israel.
In an interview that aired this past weekend, Karzai
told a private Pak television station: "If fighting starts between Pakistain and the US, we are beside Pakistain.If Pakistain is attacked and the people of Pakistain need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."
He said his government would not allow any nation, including the United States, to dictate its policies.
Those comments drew a sharp rebuke from members of Congress, including some who have been strong supporters of the decade-plus war in Afghanistan.
"Without the assistance of the United States, dollar 468 billion from the United States Treasury and the supreme sacrifice of 1,820 American soldiers who have died during Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan would still be ruled by a gang of Taliban thugs with few individual liberties and no popularly elected leaders," Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in a statement.
Dicks said Karzai's comments underscore the need for the United States to reconsider its mission and schedule for withdrawing forces from Afghanistan.
The United States has about 98,000 troops in Afghanistan and plans to bring most forces home by 2015.
It intends to withdraw the 33,000 additional troops that President Barack
We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to usObama sent to Afghanistan in 2009 by the end of the fighting season in 2012, 10,000 of them by the end of this year. About 3,000 of those have already left.
"Now more than ever, President Karzai's insult to America tells me that it's time for our country to stop pouring our limited taxpayer dollars and losing precious American lives in a country where we aren't even welcome -- and even worse, where they have the gall to threaten to side against us," Sen. Joe Manchin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this week.
Rep. Connie Mack, a Republican member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that the US "needs to have a foreign policy -- as President (George W.) Bush said -- you're either with us or against us."
Lawmakers have been critical of Pakistain, demanding it crack down on the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, considered a major threat to American forces.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told Congress last month that the violent Haqqani network "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistain's intelligence agency.
While in Pakistain, Clinton bluntly said if the government in Islamabad is unwilling or unable to take the fight to al Qaeda and the Haqqani network operating from its border with Afghanistan, the US "would show" it how to eliminate its safe havens.
Clinton's appearance comes as her department's budget is under siege in Congress.
Legislation in the House would provide dollar 39.6 billion for the State Department and foreign aid, dollar 11.2 billion less than what Obama and Clinton requested for the fiscal year that began October, 1.
Separately, it would provide dollar 7.6 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations budget for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistain.
Clinton has criticized the cuts, especially since foreign aid amounts to just 1 percent of federal spending.
Clinton will be facing a committee that has been the most antagonistic toward B.O. regime foreign policy in the current Congress. The panel, led by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Floria Republican, has voted to slash US contributions to the United Nations, conditionally block assistance to nations overseas and cut funds for global climate change initiatives and programs to help poor women and kiddies in developing countries.
The efforts have largely been a symbolic slap at the US State Department as the committee's bills stand no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and would face a certain veto by Obama.
Even the GOP-led House hasn't taken up many of the measures.