U.S. will wait Karzai out

In a sign of the Obama administration’s growing frustration with Hamid Karzai, U.S. officials this week revealed that they would wait until the Afghan president leaves office this spring to complete a long-delayed security pact that will decide how many, if any, American troops remain in the country beyond 2014. The U.S. wants to leave 10,000 troops in the country to take part in counterterrorism operations and train Afghan forces after NATO’s mission ends in December. But Karzai has repeatedly declined to sign a deal authorizing a foreign troop presence. Tired of the president’s antagonistic behavior—he has recently taken part in secret negotiations with the Taliban and accused U.S. troops of war crimes—American officials said they would conclude the agreement with Karzai’s successor, to be chosen in national elections this April.

This mess perfectly sums up the futility of our Afghanistan mission, said Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune. We’ve spent about $700 billion and sacrificed more than 2,000 American lives over the past decade propping up Karzai’s regime. Yet the country remains corrupt and violence-prone, and its leader “sounds as hostile and extreme” as our Taliban enemies. Instead of hoping that Karzai’s successor will be any better, we should simply acknowledge there are some things “the world’s sole superpower can’t do, and fixing Afghanistan is one of them.”

Karzai’s behavior is frustrating, but rational, said Peter Tomsen in Politico.com. While he’s not running in April’s presidential election, “he does seem to be maneuvering for future relevance.” Bashing America is one way to boost his standing with Islamist militants and ordinary Afghans tired of war, allowing Karzai to “position himself as a future bridge between the Taliban and the next Afghan government.”

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Whatever game Karzai is playing, the U.S. can’t walk away from Afghanistan, said The Baltimore Sun in an editorial. Without our support, Afghan government forces would lose much of the country to the Taliban and terrorist-training camps would again dot Afghanistan, just as they did before 9/11. That leaves the Obama administration with no choice but to sit tight and hope that Karzai’s eventual successor proves more adept “at holding up the Afghans’ end of the bargain.”