Wanna bet?

I suspect that the interactions of the Obama administration (from Obama on down) with Israeli President Benyamin Netanyahu were similar to those with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Obama called both on the carpet in a very public fashion. In private, he probably told they had no choice but to knuckle under and do what he wanted. (And to wear them down, he threw in an unpleasant phone call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)

And I suspect both felt about the same about their treatment. Karzai, however, is much less firmly linked to the United States and American policy than is Netanyahu. At least, that's how I explain this passage from an piece in the Los Angeles Times: "Over the weekend, Karzai reportedly told Afghan lawmakers that he would consider joining the Taliban if the United States continued to undermine him."

Someone needs to tell Obama that he can't treat our allies the same way he treats Republicans, tea partiers, and other domestic irritants. Foreigners have options.

The dangers of foreign aid

Here are two articles that highlight the difficulties and dangers associated with foreign aid for the two countries of highest current interest, Afghanistan and Haiti.

In Afghanistan, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has ignored its own procedures to throw money at the UN agency in charge of development projects there. Result: maybe $10-20 out of every $100 in aid actually make it to the announced destination; meanwhile, AID and the UN agency are the subjects of numerous reports on malfeasance.

As for Haiti, the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens argues that the worst thing we could do would be to provide more aid for reconstruction, once the humanitarian emergency is past. Haiti has received massive assistance for years, creating a culture of dependency and a corrupt and useless government. Any new aid 'surges' would only perpetuate those problems and make them even worse.

The perils of foreign elections

It's always risky to subordinate U.S. foreign policy decisions to the procedures or outcomes of foreign elections. Two recent cases come to mind: Afghanistan and Honduras.

In Afghanistan, opposition presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has now bowed out of the November 7 runoff. Since much of the discussion about whether President Obama should increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan has centered around the legitimacy of the Afghan government, this move leaves the U.S. government with both feet firmly planted...in midair.

In Honduras, the United States has brokered a murky compromise to allow former president Manual Zelaya to return home, and to proceed with November 29 elections to choose a new president to go forward. What if, as one Honduran source suggested, Zelaya can't return to Honduras until the Supreme Court rules on the issue - and it doesn't do so until after November 29? It was smart for the U.S. government to negotiate a way around its ridiculous insistence that Zelaya be reinstated, but what a dumb position to be in in the first place.

Hint to the Obama administration: try focusing primarily on U.S. national security interests. In Honduras, there were none of which I'm aware, so we should have kept our distance rather than meddling. In Afghanistan, the government's legitimacy is important, but more important is the overall security situation in the country. Both American and Afghan lives are currently at risk, and protecting them should be the main focus.

The true Taliban

In case you missed it, David Rohde, the New York Times correspondent who was kidnapped by the Taliban and held for 7 months, is publishing a series of articles about his experience. The first one appeared on Sunday, October 18, the second one today. I think there are three more on the way.

Rohde found a Taliban more extreme than he had expected - and living fairly well in its own corner of Pakistan. Among them are groups that, influenced by the foreign fighters in their midst, wants to work with Al Qaeda to re-establish the caliphate in Muslim lands.

German support for Afghan fight

John Rosenthal provides a needed correction here to a New York Times article stating that the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) has called for a withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan. The question is of importance, as the FDP is a potential coalition partner for Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, which at the moment is the expected winner in Germany's upcoming elections.

In fact, late last month FDP party chair Guido Westerwelle strongly defended the German presence in the country: "Nobody likes to send soldiers on foreign deployments. … So every reasonable politician wants to end foreign Bundeswehr missions as soon as possible. But Afghanistan cannot be permitted to become a base for terrorists again. [Our presence] in Afghanistan is, above all, about defending our security here in Germany. … It would be wrong to withdraw now, since tomorrow Kabul would then be the capital of world terrorism yet again."

That is also Angela Merkel's position, as stated in a newspaper interview August 21. It turns out that the German politician calling for a pullout is Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the head of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which is currently trailing in the polls. By coincidence, the New York Times wrongly reported Steinmeier as supporting the Afghan mission.

Why does this matter? Well, the mission in Afghanistan is a NATO one, and decisions must be made jointly. The United States spent years trying to persuade NATO allies to step up their involvement in Afghanistan. If President Obama now starts to waffle, it will really churn up the waters at NATO - in addition to any impact on Afghanistan, the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Eyewitness in Afghanistan

City Journal has an excellent piece written by Andrew Klavan, a writer embedded for five days with a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in the wilds of Afghanistan. These are the units trying to rebuild Afghanistan without getting killed themselves.

His observations match my recollections of U.S. troops in Bosnia - smart, hard-working, tough, and very focused on the task at hand. But in Afghanistan they are operating at considerable disadvantage, with a resurgent Taliban smarter and quicker at propaganda and more than happy to ambush them.

Surges and surges

I confess to being a little confused. Obama says he would still oppose the surge in Iraq, and that the surge did not contribute significantly to recent improvements there. But he wants to do a surge in Afghanistan. Why will that surge improve things? If the economic, political and security situation in Afghanistan is that much worse than in Iraq, isn't a surge even more likely to be a perilous and risky endeavor? And if the situation is that much better, isn't it even more superfluous?