Former general and outgoing US Ambassador to Kabul with some real talk for Hamid Karzai:
“When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost — in terms of life and treasure — hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people,” the ambassador said, “they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here.”
See Spencer Ackerman for some larger context on Eikenberry.
In policy terms, though, this kind of self-righteous outburst only serves to underscore how dysfunctional the relationship between the US government and the Afghan government is. They don’t like us and we don’t like them. At this point, who’s right and who’s wrong is pretty irrelevant. It’s just time for a divorce.
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