Hamid Karzai Quotes
If NATO does not stop airstrikes on Afghan homes, their presence in Afghanistan will be considered that of an occupying force. History has shown how Afghans deal with occupiers.
This threat was shocking to coalition forces and NATO country citizens whose own soldiers were dying to keep the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan again. There were some errors made in calling in airstrikes in the Afghanistan War and collateral civilian casualties occurred. However it was often very difficult to determine if a target held civilians or insurgent Taliban. Very often Taliban sympathizers would invite Taliban into their homes to ambush coalition forces. However, Taliban would also force their way into a home and threaten to kill the family if they did not cooperate. Then they attacked from that home or several at the same time. From the point of view of the coalition forces being shot at, the view was the same. An airstrike would take out the house and no one would ever really know which of those scenarios (or others) actually produced the situation. Ironically, many more Afghanis were killed by the Afghani Taliban than by NATO forces in what was a brutal civil war. See {634912} for the American Ambassador’s reply to Karzai whose administration was totally corrupt and incompetent, making the coalition’s job almost impossible.
Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, Threat made after an airstrike that he thought had killed some Afghan civilians
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See {634911} for Karzai’s threat.
Clark had commanded the American and NATO forces in the Serbian War where all the military and political objectives were accomplished with heavy losses to the Serbian’s and none to the allied side—what many think was the most successful war in American History. Like Eisenhower in WWII one great challenge was the political and strategic one of keeping the coalition of all the allied governments working together. His perspective had been like Eisenhower’s which was much wider and geopolitical than most military officers.
In this remarkable quotation, the king whose own invasion by Iraq was only stopped by American troops in the Gulf War, tells the Arab world that the American occupation which was endorsed by the Iraqi government was illegal. Many others in the world and even many in the U. S. agreed about the illegality, but the King claims to be one of the major allies and supporters of the United States. What he says for Arab and Islamic consumption is different from what he tells American and other Western diplomats. See {620141} for another example.
There already was a revolutionary effort of Filipinos to obtain independence from Spain when the U. S. defeated the Spanish in the Spanish American War. The revolutionaries then split. Most trusted the United States and looked to America to help them set up an independent government. Others wanted all foreign forces out. They continued their insurrection against the Americans which produced atrocities on both sides. Finally the insurrection was defeated, and the Philippines have been independent ever since. This quotation was the policy justification that President McKinley used to justify the American involvement in the Philippines after the defeat of Spain.
This was a precursor of the total war views of William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War half a century later.
over civilian casualties of American attacks The military over-promoted our smart weapons degree of capability to where most people thought that the weapons and the intelligence was much more accurate and controllable than it was. When innocent Afghan civilians were killed by American use of smart weapons, the Afghan’s believed that the only two explanations were that the Americans wanted to kill the civilians or that they didn’t care enough to carfully use their smart weapons properly.
This was in the middle of the Cold War and the political leaders had to face the fact that their major military nuclear weapons, as a practical matter, could not be used. The result was not only too destructive but retaliation would produce MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.
This concept of Total War turns out to be the only way to bring many conflicts to an end. Sherman was hated by generations of Southerners because he appeared to be vengeful to humble the Southern pride and spirit. But actually, Sherman was not personally vengeful at all and respected the South and understood its point of view more than most in the North. However, he was one of the first of the Western World’s military leaders to realize that with modern warfare and the then modern weapons, the only way to win a war was to persuade the enemy to stop fighting and if they refused, as the South kept doing, the only rational and humane course was to end the war as swiftly and totally as possible.
The great powers she was referring to were Russia, United States, Turkey, and Iran. However, France as the ex-colonial power and England as a major force in post Ottoman Empire control are were also important. The Assad Alawite government and the Sunni majority were at odds with nether strong enough to crush the other.
His advice and conclusion about Afghanistan was not taken by the British of any of the other military forces that have been in Afghanistan including the Russians and the American-led coalition in the early 21st century.
- Born: December 24, 1957
- Nationality: Afghan
- Profession: Businessman
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who was the president of Afghanistan from 22 December 2001 to 29 September 2014. He is also the leader of the Popalzai Durrani tribe of Kandahar.
