Afghan president Hamid Karzai says that Afghanistan does not need US troops to stay beyond the currently agreed upon departure date at the end of 2014.  He stated that his country’s forces are fully trained to be able to repel any foreign invaders.  He included any Special Forces operators in this unequivocal renouncement of any dependence on the US.  He also reiterated again that he will not sign a pact already negotiated and agreed upon between our country and his country’s ruling tribal leaders.  This pact would have allowed for a token force of human targe… er… Soldiers to train his military and operators to hunt and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban.  If we want to bring peace to Afghanistan, we should attack Pakistan, he says.

I say, give him what he wants.  He wants us out, let us leave.  We do not have to wait until the end of the year.  He will not be in power by then and will certainly blame the fall of his country on either his successor or the US (likely both).  If we left now, we could be gone before their elections and he could preside over the demise of his backward country.  He’ll likely use the attacks that will come as a catalyst to return to power against their own constitution.  But hell, he has learned from our own leaders that the Constitution is but a mere tool to gain and retain power.  We can use the parts we like and trounce on the parts we do not.

Does anyone really think he is going to simply move out of the presidential palace and go back to his mud hut in the Karz region of Kandahar?  No, he is going to take the billions of US tax payer dollars he has siphoned from our military and economic support and retire to a villa in France or some other posh resort where people overlook his rancid traits because he pays them well.

Nope, I say expedite his wishes.  Let’s get the fuck out of there using a scorched earth process.  The first thing scorched?  The poppy fields which produce the ingredients needed for the production of heroin–their chief export.  We leave nothing we built intact and erect.  No vehicles, no trainers, no spare parts, no caches of ammunition, weapons or food.  And the last thing we take?  Our aid.  Not a damn dime.  The first thing we deny? Technology.

“The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of    iron, copper,  cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so     many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”

The deposits were discovered in 2010 by a team Pentagon officials and American geologists.  Not Afghan officials or goat farmers from local villages.  Americans.  There are wide veins of gold, copper, iron ore, oil, lithium, and coal.  Estimates of their value range from one to three trillion dollars and could easily propel Afghanistan away from a country producing heroin to one rich in industry and high paying employment.  But they are not going get that shit out of the ground with their farming hoes and sheep switches.  No, you need drills and other heavy moving equipment–shit we have a lot of and build more of.

We went there and saved his ass and his country’s.  And this is gratitude?  Fuck him.  And anyone like him.