Why are we still supporting Hamid Karzai?

[Cain]

I mean, apart from the fact we are idiots and notoriously bad at counterinsurgency?  Because, as far as I can see, the vast majority of Afghanistan see Karzai as

a) corrupt
b) stupid (he isn't, but he comes across that way)
c) inefficient

One wouldn't be a major problem.  All three are a recipe for disaster.  Counterinsugency relies on building up the legitimacy of the government over the hostiles, which means being able to provide the basic services (services necessary to live, security, economic stability etc) while not being as corrupt, violent and ideological as the hostiles in question.  Since Karzai cannot deliver, and clearly the only reason he is in power is because we, the ISAF, are propping him up via our own alliances among the warlords, why haven't we told him to get lost, and set him up with tenure at Stanford or something?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Why did we EVER support him?

I was kinda just wanting to dump on Afghanistan really, really hard, and then leave.

[Cain]

The idea is, not entirely unreasonably, that if we up and leave, the Taliban will creep in and take over again, and Al-Qaeda will return as well, and given how dangerous than can be without a base of operations, to hand one over to them on a plate is not really a good move.

Of course, Al-Qaeda already has a foothold in other weak states, like Yemen, and we haven't intervened there (yet).  I think the prospect of civilian Pakistan falling apart due to Afghani instability is now the driving force behind the "stay the course" crowd, because intervening there is both a strategic and financial impossibility.

Naturally, that invading armies may be an underlying cause of Afghani instability, and rallying cry for factions of the Neo-Taliban, are also overlooked.

Oh, and there is lots of heroin in Afghanistan.  As in, tens of billions, when cut and distributed properly.  Hey, isn't Russia suffering from a massive deluge of cheap heroin about now?

[Jenne]

The Mayor of Kabul, unfortunately, only has as much power as the people who installed him will give him.  Well, that was pretty little, unfortunately.  There's still a show of confidence in him mostly because, though the Afghans in Afghanistan feel the weight of the paucity of power behind Karzai, they still know that without his figurehead representation in place, another 30 years of war might ensue. 

Indigenous Talibs are STILL a relatively new phenomenon there--though there are villagers who, to all intents and purposes, are similar in belief system and sympathize with a will to instill that belief system, they don't have the agenda and have a more laissez faire attitude towards global and national politics.  But from these villagers has sprung an Afghan insurgency, with the impotence of Karzai's government and the rank corruption in both Kabul and amongst the warlords that were primarily bought off but were left basically to their own devices, people are fed up.  And so they take up arms against those who are there to "keep the peace," though they are REALLY weary of war.

I mean REALLY weary.  That's why the Talibs were able to come from the South in the first place.  People were fed up, wanting any sort of order.  But that any sort led to 9/11, and Afghans DO know that that would spell their doom if something like what AQ was able to pull off from bases in Afghanistan were to go down to again.  They may talk a big game about "Death to Americans!" but they do really know which side their bread is buttered.

I worry more about Pakistan, actually.  It's been spoonfed and coddled and now it's almost rudderless in many ways.  At least, those ways it's being steered are occluded until their effects are already on the horizon.  You can calculate pretty easily how it's all going down with Pakistan...and that's a chilling picture to me, at least.