[Dawn] Afghan ground forces will be barred from calling in NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
air strikes after an attack killed a number of children this week, President Hamid
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...
said Saturday.
"I issue a decree, from tomorrow none of the Afghan forces are allowed to ask for foreign air support under any conditions," he said in an address to young officers at a military academy in Kabul.
"Our forces ask for air support from foreigners and children get killed in an air strike," he said.
This was apparently a reference to an attack during an overnight raid by combined Afghan and NATO ground forces on a Taliban hideout in a remote eastern region on Wednesday.
Initial reports said 10 civilians, including five children and four women, were killed when the air strike was called in.
There was absolutely no mention of the bloody-handed Taliban savages who were using them as human shields.
Three Taliban capos, including a notorious Al-Qaeda-linked thug leader called Shahpoor, were also killed in the raid, Afghan officials said.
Ah ha! There WAS some mention of the bloody-handed Taliban savages who were using the civilians as human shields. Fancy that.
Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces fighting Taliban Islamist Orcs and similar vermin are a highly sensitive issue and are regularly condemned by Karzai.
Because it works so well with NGOs, the UN, and hand-wringing apologists wielding pseudo-moralistic tropes.
"We are happy the foreign troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan," he said, referring to the scheduled withdrawal of US-led NATO combat troops by the end of next year.
"I have been arguing with the foreign troops, don't bombard our houses, don't go to our villages, don't disrespect our people. And we hear our forces partnered with foreign forces are violating human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
Karzai said Afghan forces would be able to defend the country after the foreign troops withdraw.
Because Afghan troops have been ever-so effective... starting -- NOW!
"I agree we are passing through a challenging phase, but we are the owners of this country.
"America is not the owner of this country, Pakistain is not the owner of this country, Germany is not the owner of this country, La Belle France is not the owner of this country.
And NO country with half a brain would want anything to do with a bunch of sub-human savages like us, unless we have been nuked beyond the stone-age first!!! (Thankfully for us, no one has done that yet -- because it would be hard to take primitives like us beyond the stone-age. And we're already familiar with life in the stone-age! Bwahahahaha!!!!)
"And fortunately, we will show to the world that we can protect our country, and we can defend our country."More than 3,200 NATO troops, mostly Americans, have died in support of Karzai's government in the 11-year war since the Taliban were ousted by a US invasion in 2001, but relations between the president and the US are often prickly.