Clinton heads to Afghanistan to find out why we’re there

According to the Associated Press, “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is heading to South Asia on a mission aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year-old conflict.”

Well, that didn’t take long. Things should be well and truly decided by 2020.

Clinton and a bunch of other international heavyweights are flying into Kabul on Tuesday to pressure Hamid Karzai, the incredibly resilient, hand-picked-by-the-US president of the country, or parts of the country, into doing whatever it is he promised to do the last time people parachuted in to pressure him to do something.

Unfortunately, Karzai doesn’t really have to do anything that furthers any aspiration other than his own survival. US leaders have made several attempts to pry him out of the presidential palace. When those failed, they attempted to create autonomous security forces and civil governments that would work around Karzai and owe their allegiances to the US, an effort Karzai, with an assist from the Taliban, who have a shared interest in keeping the provincial governments and militias weak, was able to thwart.

Now the international community, who served as the model for the “Survivor” reality television series, hope to persuade Karzai that his survival depends more upon them than upon continuing to satisfy the massively corrupt local political and economic machines.

But Karzai has the superior hand in the negotiations. He embodies the old saw: “Can’t live with him, can’t shoot him.” The reason he has the superior hand is that he has spent the past eight years single-mindedly maneuvering to secure his physical and political survival, while the US and other concerned states have taken a more ADD-oriented approach, drifting in and out of focus. What happens in his country matters to him for the most personal of reasons; the outside parties seem quite sure that it matters to them as well, but they appear unsure exactly why. Maybe they’ll agree on something next week.