American Placed Leader Going Rogue, Again
The US has a long legacy of helping to maneuver foreign figures into power that the Washington believes will help aid US interests abroad. As author and columnist William Pfaff recently points out, more often than not, this strategy fails.
From WilliamPfaff.com:
“President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan last Thursday [April 1] told his country’s parliament that American and other western governments, together with officials of the United Nations, were responsible for the widespread fraud that occurred in Afghanistan’s presidential campaign and election last year, and indeed that they were continuing to undermine his government.
“A UN-led Electoral Complaints Commission had disqualified nearly a million votes cast for President Karzai, thereby depriving him of an outright majority in last year’s presidential vote.
“This attack by President Karzai on his former western sponsors came four days after U.S. President Barack Obama personally visited Kabul to urge a crackdown by the Karzai government on the corruption supposedly provoking the Taliban rebellion in Afghanistan.
“The Afghan uprising has by now led to insurrectionary episodes by Pakistani Talibans against the Pakistan army and government, and last weekend, an assault upon the U.S. consulate in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The attack employed a truck bomb and rockets, and killed several Pakistani policemen and guards, and at least three bystanders, while wounding a score of others.
“President Karzai told his parliament that the U.S.-led NATO military coalition now in his country – being enlarged by land, sea and air with every passing day — is close to finding itself looked upon in Afghanistan as an invasion force. That would lend even further support to the opinion held by many Afghans that the Taliban are fighting to defend their country.”
Pfaff also explains Karzai’s depiction of the US having “designs on Afghanistan’s sovereignty, planning permanent military bases there and the use of Afghan territory for a pipeline route [for energy] that would avoid the ex-Soviet states.” It just goes to show that the US isn’t much better at choosing which elected officials to put in office abroad than it is here.
The article is worth a read in its entirety, and can be found in a WilliamPfaff.com post on managing the American empire.
Best,
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