Ajami: Afghanistan teaches Americans how not to fight a war
Originally published: May 2, 2013 6:46 PM
Updated: May 2, 2013 6:54 PM
By FOUAD AJAMI, Bloomberg View
In the unforgiving Afghan landscape, we have learned that you can't buy a warlord. You can only rent one. We owe this education to our man in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai.
For more than a decade, it has been recently confirmed, U.S. dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags have been delivered every month or so to Karzai's office. "We called it 'ghost money,'" Khalil Roman, who served as the Afghan president's deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times. "It came in secret, and it left in secret."
In the theory of imperialism, we would venture into the Hindu Kush and reform its ways. It would, instead, be the other way around: The U.S. took to the ways of "the East," and baksheesh is the order of the day. We do business by the rules of the warlords.
Almost three years ago, Karzai proudly let us know that we weren't his sole benefactor. "They do give us bags of money -- yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this." Give the man his due; he has never whispered sweet things in our ears about "transparency," and he hasn't bothered retaining a Washington lobbying firm that would tutor him on what he should say to -- and about -- his American patrons.
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/ajami-afghanistan-teaches-americans-how-not-to-fight-a-war-1.5186831
