Karzai

The New York Times headline reads U.S. Memo Faults Afghan Leader on Heroin Fight. It ought to read U.S. Memo Finds that Hamid Karzai is Neither Stupid nor Insane.

Some policymakers in this administration would like to believe that the interests of US established leaders are identical to the interests of the United States. In the case of Iraq, this leads to the fairly bizarre belief that a democratic Iraq will be supportive of Israel. In Afghanistan, the situation is somewhat worse. Some in the administration seem to believe that cutting down on poppy cultivation would be both in the capacity and interest of the Afghan central government. Hamid Karzai, of course, is under no such illusion; he understands the weakness of his government, appreciates the paucity of US support, and realizes that any vigorous program aimed at poppy destruction would result in the collapse of his regime. In short, Karzai understands that the demands of the War on Terror conflict fundamentally with the demands of the War on Drugs. Bush administration policymakers, incapable of grasping value trade-offs, cannot bring themselves to understand this.

Notably, the British do grasp these problems:

The cable also faulted Britain, which has the top responsibility for counternarcotics assistance in Afghanistan, for being “substantially responsible” for the failure to eradicate more acreage. British personnel choose where the eradication teams work, but the cable said that those areas were often not the main growing areas and that the British had been unwilling to revise targets.

While the British haven’t had the good sense to stay out of the US imperial project, they do have some sense of how such a project should be conducted, and realize that trade-offs are necessary. For this, they come under attack.

With us, or against us. Even when we can’t decide if we’re with or against ourselves.