{"id":29592,"date":"2012-04-20T08:30:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T12:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29592"},"modified":"2012-04-20T08:35:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T12:35:12","slug":"karzai-wants-speedier-withdrawal-because-of-la-times-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29592","title":{"rendered":"Karzai wants speedier withdrawal because of LA Times photos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Old Trooper sends a link to an LA Times<\/a> report that Afghanistan’s president is calling for a faster withdrawal of NATO troops from his shithole to prevent “a recurrence of “painful experiences” such as the sight of American soldiers posing with the body parts of dead insurgents.” Yeah, then we can have a proliferation of photos of disfigured Afghan school girls. I’m wondering which is more painful for Karzai to endure;<\/p>\n

The palace statement said Karzai sought an “accelerated and full transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, so Afghanistan can take over its own destiny, and thus no such things can be repeated by the foreign forces in Afghanistan.”<\/p>\n

The NATO force is due to wind down its combat role in 2014, but growing numbers of troop-contributing nations have indicated they plan to pull out their fighting forces next year. A transition of security responsibilities to the Afghan police and army is the centerpiece of the U.S. exit strategy.<\/p>\n

Also Thursday, the Taliban, in its first public statement since the pictures appeared, denounced the “gruesome acts” depicted in the photos. The militant group also lambasted Afghan soldiers who were present in some of the shots.<\/p>\n

“Some Afghan hirelings … posed in the photos, at their masters’ orders, to scorn the remains of martyrs,” the statement said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, I’m sure this isn’t the first, or the last time that Karzai finds himself in complete agreement with his past and future masters, the Taliban. Like I’ve said countless times before, I’d like for Karzai to be as angry at the Taliban for what they inflict on the people he’s supposed to be protecting as he does about these relatively minor transgressions from Americans.<\/p>\n

On a related subject, I was supposed to be on BBC’s “World Have Your Say”<\/a> this afternoon. They wanted to discuss this manufactured outrage over some photos posted by the LA Times in the context that these guys were under some sort of combat stress. <\/p>\n

I emailed the producer this morning and told her that I wouldn’t discuss this particular issue under those constraints since I don’t believe the paratroopers actions were related to combat stress, but rather just a result of them being youngsters with cameras. And, the LA Times having an agenda to be known as the ones who ended our war in Afghanistan. And who knows what were the motivations of the guy who gave the photos to the LA Times. “Combat stress” is a distraction from the discussion about LA Times’ malfeasance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old Trooper sends a link to an LA Times report that Afghanistan’s president is calling for … Karzai wants speedier withdrawal because of LA Times photos<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}