Despairing of Afghanistan

I’ve been unable to find this in recent news – did Hamid Karzai call Obama and apologize for the recent deaths of US soldiers at the hands of Afghani police or civilians working on American bases? I suspect that the diplomacy of apology is only required in one direction.

I doubt that this apology from Obama will do anything to stem the violence that will erupt from this incident. The outrage expressed by the people over any incident is so disproportional that I fear for any and all Canadian, US or UN troops in Afghanistan or anywhere in that region.

With Karzai’s recent alignment with the tenets of Sharia law, many of the civil advances in Afghanistan are completely overturned, taking them back to pre-2001 standards and calling into question the entire rationale for the West’s interventions and the considerable costs – human and financial – that have been made.

This latest incident is unquestionably tragic. But I anticipate that that tragedy will be manipulated to fan the fires of outrage within Afghanistan well beyond any rational response and used for political purposes that ultimately have nothing to do with this soldier’s own experience and actions.