Officials said Petraeus expressed "astonishment and disappointment" with Karzai's call, in a Saturday interview with The Washington Post, to "reduce military operations" and end U.S. Special Operations raids in southern Afghanistan that coalition officials said have killed or captured hundreds of Taliban commanders in recent months.
In a meeting Sunday morning with Ashraf Ghani, who leads the Afghan government's planning on transition, Petraeus made what several officials described as "hypothetical" references to an inability to continue U.S. operations in the face of Karzai's remarks.
The night raids are at the heart of Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy and are key to his hopes of being able to show significant progress when the White House reviews the situation in Afghanistan next month.
Given that we take great care to avoid killing civilians even when it puts our troops at risk (as we should do in a counter-insurgency), it is doubly insulting to hear Karzai say this.
I get the impression that Karzai's worry is that the raids are working. I get the impression that he'd be happier to have a stalemate that allows him to skim money from Western money pouring into Afghanistan as the war rages than to win the war and end the gravy train of corruption.
Unfortunately, it would be a mistake to take action to remove him. That has to be an Afghan decision taken in elections and legal processes. Karzai may be a son of a bitch, but at least he's not our son of a bitch.
You go to war with the allied leaders that you have, and not the allied leaders you wish you had.
