His furtive, short and clad-in-dark visit to Presidential Palace in Kabul and Bagram Airfield on 9:15pm-11:59pm on 28 March 2010 demonstrated how insecure and unreliable Kabul is for the U.S. President.
“Now, I know for most of you, you didn’t get a lot of notice that I was coming,” Obama admitted to thousands of American soldiers at Bagram Airfield, arguably the safest and most protected location in Afghanistan.
However, he fell short to elucidate the fact that prevalent insecurity and fear of Taliban attacks forced him to make a rather stealthy and sneaky visit to Kabul.
I may look impolite to call him a “coward” but I am afraid this is the impression President Obama has left with his surprising visit.
Undoubtedly Mr. Obama spent more hours in his Air Force One on the long way from Washington to Kabul than with his troops and partner in Kabul.
He gave a 372-word speech in the heavily fortified Karzai Palace as helicopters and jets roared overhead but did not answer a single question from journalists.
Arguably for U.S. Presidents Afghanistan means Hamid Karzai and therefore meeting Karzai means visiting Afghanistan and Afghans.
Bravo Mr. President! You visited Afghanistan. Get back to the Oval Office and revamp another policy/strategy for Afghanistan because you’ve got first-hand knowledge.
1 comment:
I worry, for you country as well as ours, that the president does not have sage advice on the area, its people, its problems, and its politics. Since first becoming interested in the area it seems to me that the intelligence network for Washington has been the same, only the president has changed. Hopefully since Mr. Obama has a better grasp on reality than George Bush, he might hopefully see or hear where he is off base now and thing will change. Kudos to you, Ahmed Rashid, and others like you that continue to report events as they happen.
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