Goodbye, Good Luck, and Thanks For All The Fish

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has decreed that his government will no longer allow NATO forces to bomb Afghan homes that are being used by Taliban or Al Qaeda insurgents.  Everyone wants to eliminate or at least minimize civilian casualties. However, the enemy we fight in Afghanistan mixes with the civilian population specifically because we may pull a punch when there's the chance of harming non-combatants.  By putting such places off limits, President Karzai provides the Taliban with a safe haven to retreat to in a fight and lay low while they plan their next operation. Effectively, he's made all of the cities and a large part of the country into no-go zones for NATO troops, since unless they can call down the hammer of the gods, they're unlikely to engage the enemy in any concentration.

Since President Karzai has decided that he's capable of telling us where and how we can fight in defense of his regime, I say we let him stand his own army on the firing line for a change.  I mean, it's only been a decade since we started trying to make a cohesive Afghan national army so we could go home.  It's not like we didn't create the circumstances that allowed him to become president in the first place, or that we haven't spent billions of dollars and the lives of over 1500 American soldiers to prevent his execution at the hands of his countrymen.

Listen up, sparky:  About 15 minutes after the last C-141 takes off out of Bagram, you, your family, and everyone associated with you is going to be put against a wall, beheaded, hung, or set on fire.  The only thing that's keeping your heart beating is the fact that Americans are more willing to put steel on target than your own soldiers are. How about instead of kvetching about the methods, no matter how sloppy we use, to try to root out the Taliban, you get off your well dressed backside and get your bloody army into the field and trained to actually do more than march in a straight line on a parade field?  Keep dictating to us the methods by which we keep your bloody heart beating, and you just might wake up and find yourself with a country devoid of American guns and soldiers.