What on earth is the President and our country doing welcoming this man here. His latest rantings and dangerous behavior warrant a shun, not a full diplomatic reception and red carpet. Our country, while admittedly not the most effective in Afghanistan, still has done much to attempt to support the country and raise it up.

And maybe not effective in Afghanistan is too simple a description. Certainly some of our attempts in that country have been just bad.

But we’re talking about a country that, when we entered, openly harbored and supported the very people who undertook the attack on America in 911. Viewed in those terms, I don’t think we necessarily owe them any courtesy. But, trying to understand that the complexities of the political situation – I concede that if we merely went in, took out the taliban and departed the resulting vacuum would be a potential breeding ground for worse and more radical regimes. Good. Got it.

But, Karzai, who was supposed to be our partner in the endeavor of limited rebuilding and our departure seems to be milking us like a cow he can’t stop embracing. That’s with one hand. While he has one arm around the cow that is the United States, the other has a torch in it he keeps setting to our side. Ouch.

Ouch indeed. His statements about joining the Taliban are not laughable. They are to viewed in the most serious way and should be immediate cause for dismissing him as ignorant, a mad man, dangerous or all of the above. (I vote for the last choice). I know we keep hearing we have no alternatives but to support him. Really? Isn’t that the precise same thing this county said/did during the Hussein regime in Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war? Years later, he was the great Satan.

It seems like history repeating itself. Why on earth would we not believe he’d bite the hand, when he’s already nibbling. Duh.

It’s time to come up with a strategy of withdrawal, vacuum be damned. I don’t want to hear the arguments about it being another Vietnam either. It was a failed strategy the moment Bush diverted his attention from it, split our focus and resources, to settle the family vendetta in Iraq with the man that threatened his father’s life. At that point it became hopeless. It’s time to admit it, and depart before the continued spending there costs higher and higher dollar and lives.

To be blunt. I care far more for the lives of our troops than what happens in that part of the world at this point.