Of Course We're Depressed -- They Have Us Over a Barrel
Marty Kaplan
HuffPost
It's not the news that's a downer -- there's always been misery and ugliness around. It's our helplessness that's depressing us, the feeling that they have us over a barrel.
Who "they"?
Hamid Karzai has us over a barrel. He's as corrupt as they come, and the only thing he's good at is sabotaging investigations of corruption. Yet the mission and the fate of our 100,000 brave troops in Afghanistan are tied to his crooked little pinky, and apparently there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
Iraq has us over a barrel. The only thing that can prevent its collapse into failed statehood, the only hope to forestall a resurgence of the kind of violence that would return U.S. combat troops to Iraq, is a deadlocked Parliament that has met for 18 minutes in the six months since it was elected.
Pakistan has us over a barrel. Its president, Asif Ali Zadari, who spent 12 years in prison for corruption, makes Hamid Karzai look like a saint. Its intelligence service is in cahoots with the Taliban; its black-market nukes merchant A.Q. Khan is a national hero; it's "a site for recruiting and training American nationals intent on carrying out terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland," says the Congressional Research Service. But as President Obama explained at West Point, our fight against Al-Qaeda and our success in Afghanistan are "inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan."
(More here.)
HuffPost
It's not the news that's a downer -- there's always been misery and ugliness around. It's our helplessness that's depressing us, the feeling that they have us over a barrel.
Who "they"?
Hamid Karzai has us over a barrel. He's as corrupt as they come, and the only thing he's good at is sabotaging investigations of corruption. Yet the mission and the fate of our 100,000 brave troops in Afghanistan are tied to his crooked little pinky, and apparently there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
Iraq has us over a barrel. The only thing that can prevent its collapse into failed statehood, the only hope to forestall a resurgence of the kind of violence that would return U.S. combat troops to Iraq, is a deadlocked Parliament that has met for 18 minutes in the six months since it was elected.
Pakistan has us over a barrel. Its president, Asif Ali Zadari, who spent 12 years in prison for corruption, makes Hamid Karzai look like a saint. Its intelligence service is in cahoots with the Taliban; its black-market nukes merchant A.Q. Khan is a national hero; it's "a site for recruiting and training American nationals intent on carrying out terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland," says the Congressional Research Service. But as President Obama explained at West Point, our fight against Al-Qaeda and our success in Afghanistan are "inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan."
(More here.)
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