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Afghanistan: Whose country is it and controls what?

Glenn Greenwald writing on Salon, asks a valid question. Who actually controls war-torn Afghanistan?

"A spate of horrific civilian killings by NATO in Afghanistan has led Afghan President Hamid Karzai to demand that NATO cease all air attacks on homes. That is likely to be exactly as significant as you think it would be, as The Los Angeles Times makes clear:

"This should be the last attack on people's houses," the president told a news conference in Kabul. "Such attacks will no longer be allowed."

Karzai's call was viewed as mainly symbolic. Western military officials cited existing cooperation with Afghan authorities and pledged to continue consultations, but said privately that presidential authority does not include veto power over specific targeting decisions made in the heat of battle.

So we're in Afghanistan to bring Freedom and Democracy to the Afghan People, but the President of the country has no power whatsoever to tell us to stop bombing Afghan homes. His decrees are simply requests, merely "symbolic." Karzai, of course, is speaking not only for himself, but even more so for (and under pressure from) the Afghan People: the ones we're there to liberate, but who -- due to their strange, primitive, inscrutable culture and religion -- are bizarrely angry about being continuously liberated from their lives: "Karzai's statements . . . underscored widespread anger among Afghans over the deaths of noncombatants at the hands of foreign forces."

Indeed, the Afghan People -- on whose behalf we are fighting so valiantly -- are total ingrates and simply do not appreciate all that we're doing for them. A poll of Afghan men released earlier this month by the International Council on Security and Development found overwhelming opposition to NATO operations in their country."

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