Afghan President Hamid Karzai is scheduled to visit White House on Friday.  Karzi used to operate restaurants in the US.  So the Bush administration installed him as the President of Afghanistan.  During that never ending war, he has been an extremely corrupt profiteer.  US officials never seemed to mind Karzai's corruption because he always supported the US policy of destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Elections in Afghanistan are for show.  The results of the vote is pre-determined by Karzai who forbids international monitoring.  Recently Karzai has realized the the US intends to eventually withdraw from Afghanistan and Karzai fears that his own people will kill him.  So Karzai has been more and more critical of the US in an attempt to gain popular support among the indigenous Muslim population.

Karzai has highlighted anything he can to win over Muslim zealots.  There was an accidental Qur'an burning episode and Karzai said wanted to prosecute US soldiers involved.  More recently he strongly criticized the US government for a YouTube video that ridiculed Muhammad even though he knew the US government was not involved with the video in any way.  Karzai has even claimed that NATO is responsible for the security problems in his country.  More US causalities are resulting from Afghani soldiers and police officers than from Taliban attacks.

The meeting this Friday with Karzai could be the beginning a significant change in the US policy in Afghanistan.  President Obama has been meeting with military and intelligence experts to prepare for his meeting with Karzai.  These unnamed experts pulled no punches when they briefed the President.  What follows is a partial transcript of the briefing that was leaked to Mother Jones Magazine.

President Obama:  "Gentleman, I need to know anything you can tell me about Afghan President Hamid Karzai.  And I want your input regarding the war."

Leon Paneta:  "Mr. President, I think Karzai is completely corrupt.  He is strictly about money.  We can buy this guy and get him to do whatever we want.  And the war has changed.  Our main problem isn't the enemy.  We aren't taking many casualties as a result of Taliban attacks.  The biggest threat to our forces are the supposed friendlies that we are training up.  The Taliban can't breach our perimeters, they can only shoot at us when we leave our bases and venture out into the countryside.  Their ambushes aren't very effective and they usually turn into opportunities for us to wipe them out.  But the Afghani soldiers we train are in a position to kill US soldiers.  We simply can't trust them with live ammunition around our forces.  This is making it extremely dangerous to train them."

President Obama:  "Okay.  If it's too dangerous to train Afghani soldiers, what do you recommend."

Leon Paneta:  "I recommend we get the Hell out of there as fast as possible.  We're in a no win situation.  We should cut our losses and beat feet.  Frankly, I don't give a shit what happens in that Hell-hole after we leave."

President Obama:  "Thank you for being so candid, Leon.  Okay, what does the CIA have to say about this."

Michael Morell:  "I agree with everything the SecDef just so eloquently said.  Karzai is a crook.  We already bought him.  He knows we can kill him anytime we want and we can make it look like the Taliban did it.  He's scared shitless of us.  We accomplished our objective there.  We have rendered al Qaeda impotent.  The Taliban has been decimated.  And Osama bi Laden is fucking dead.  We don't need a US military presence on the ground.  What we need to do is throw some more money at Karzai and convince him to sign an agreement to permit our drones to keep flying.  We'll tell him it's for his protection.  That way we can keep an eye out for the bastards we still want to kill.  But our troops will be safe because we'll withdraw them.  We don't need to have US soldiers in harms way over there.  They are just targets of opportunity for the Jihadis."

President Obama:  "Well, I agree with your assessment  but we still have a problem because of the politics here and in Afghanistan.  If we suddenly pull out, it will be perceived that we lost the war.  People will be throwing around that 'cut-and-run' language and calling us cowards.  And even if Karzai is a piece of shit, we don't want it to appear that we abandoned an ally.

Leon Paneta:  Here's a solution to that.  We won't 'cut-and-run' we'll 'cut-and-blame'.  When you meet with Karzai you'll tell him he has the opportunity to get a billion dollar pay off.  He has to agree to hold a joint press conference with you after the meeting.  He will publically request that America withdraw our troops ASAP.  He will claim that his country is ready to assume responsibility for it's own security.  He will thank us for our help in defeating the Taliban.  When he gets back to Afghanistan he will hold victory parades and have his loyal supporters hug American and thank them for their help.  This shit will look great on CNN.  Then our boys come home to big victory parades here.  There will be photo ops galore.  Parties in the streets.  The vets will love it.  Because they will be home and they'll be safe.  And we will save a butt-load of money.  We can use some of the saving for deficit reduction and some of it to shore up the VA.  And there will even be money to spend on infastructure.  It looks like a win-win-win-win."

President Obama:  "And if Afghanistan falls apart because of an ensuing civil war, we just blame Karzai?"

Leon Paneta:  "Exactly!  Fuck Karzai.  He's not worth the life of a single American soldier."

Notice:  Unfortunately this conversation is fictitious.  

picture credits:

Leon Panetta   http://images.politico.com/global/news/110427_leon_panetta_328_ap.jpg

Michael Morell   http://media.dunyabulteni.net/250x190/2012/11/10/michael-morell.jpg

Hamid Karzai   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Hamid_Karzai_2006-09-26.jpg