Awwwwwwwwkward ...
Karzai: Tehran is 'very close friend'
Embrace comes as U.S. repeats charge arms made in Iran are flowing to Taliban
Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave Iran his full embrace Monday, saying it has been his country's "very close friend," even as U.S. officials meeting with him here repeated their accusation that Iranian-made weapons were flowing to Taliban fighters.
Suddenly, all that unconditional support for the Afghan mission is looking a bit strained.
9 comments:
OMG...Wingnuts a-poppiin' all over the place.
Karzai is just thinking long term: America is going to cut and run from Iraq as soon as the next election brings in a Democrat President, which is inevitable. Iran will be the big dog in the area and Karzai doesn't want to publicly provoke it before he has to sleep with it. Look for public statements of dissatisfaction with the ISAF to come next, leading to a complete withdrawal of foreign forces in the days following the American exit from Iraq. The Taliban should be back in power in about three to four years, if it suits Iran, and the training camps for OBL's true-believers will be booking jihadi trainee arrivals soon thereafter.
It's all very straightforward, really.
Only straightforward if you know nothing about the region but still feel the burning need to "predict."
Not that I think you're wrong, necessarily; it's just that uninformed predictions are what got us into this mess in the first place.
Ever since I heard some pundit (I wish I could remember who it was) "predict," in 1989, that it would be decades before Germany would re-unite, I've come to realise that predictions are a waste of time. Like 9/11, things can happen suddenly and change everything.
It's not really a prediction, it's merely things going back to the way they were before the U.S. incursions into each place (Iraq, Afghanistan) occurred.
The Taliban should be back in power in about three to four years, if it suits Iran, and the training camps for OBL's true-believers will be booking jihadi trainee arrivals soon thereafter.
See, you're undermining your credibility big-time right there. Iran was never friendly with the Taliban; in fact they supported and aided the invasion to topple them. Similarly, as a Shi'ite nation they have little tolerance for the extreme Wahabi (Sunnis) of Al Qaeda.
My spelling may be poor, but it's not as bad as your history. Then, as now, the big backers of the Taliban were in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Adam, do you know the meaning of the word "if"? Reread both my comments, slowly, and see if you understand them better.
The Taliban was in power before the U.S. incursion: that is called "history". Iran allowed it then, and could well again.
" If it suits Iran" is a conditional phrase.
I did not say Iran backed the Taliban, nor did I make any comments concerning Shi'ite/Sunni factionalism. Frankly, I couldn't care less. My point was that Karzai recognizes the big dog when he sees it and is hedging his bets against a return to the old status quo (there's that history again) when the inevitable American pullout occurs.
So Iran didn't have the power to stop the Taliban last time, but they do this time?
I don't find any fault of your assessment of Karzai's actions - it's the rest of your predictions that seem uninformed. But hey, you've got that word 'if' in there. I predict it will rain tomorrow - if it suits Iran.
"So Iran didn't have the power to stop the Taliban last time, but they do this time?"
I don't think there is any question that Iran is more powerful than Afghanistan now, and was when the Taliban were in power. Why they did little to overthrow the Taliban is open to debate, and again, who cares? They just didn't, for whatever reason. But American withdrawal will come during a period of Iranian muscle-flexing; does a week go by without another Ahmadinejad outburst aimed at informing the world-at-large of Iran's soon-to-be-had prowess?
"I predict it will rain tomorrow - if it suits Iran."
Now that is funny! Touche!
The issue I take with prediction and speculation is that it strikes me as a pose; a way to feign knowledgeability by prognosticating, rather than exposing facts and evidence drawn from the historical record (which I simply find more interesting, since the future is up for grabs).
Some people enjoy that kind of thing; with the neocon-led record of being disastrously wrong about everything they predicted in the last few years, I just find it alternately distracting or irritating, now.
No offense, Buckyfuller.
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