Bush & Karzai: Afghanistan society is peaceful and optimistic

Bush today met Hamid Karzai, who is usually kept stored in a closet just off the Mural Room.



Speaking of coming out of the closet, Hamid tells George that he has just the softest hands.



George, on the other hand, is mesmerized by Hamid’s hat.



Bush: “Increasing numbers of low-level Taliban are getting the message that Afghanistan society is peaceful and optimistic.” Although just a minute later he says that in this peaceful and optimistic society there is a need to “continue to train the Afghan army so that they’re capable of defeating the terrorists.” Maybe the terrorists are peaceful and optimistic too.

Asked whether US troops would take orders from Karzai’s regime, as Karzai suggested a couple of days ago, Bush said fuck no. OK, he said “our relationship is one of cooperate and consult,” but it amounts to the same thing. When Bush says “cooperate and consult,” it means the same thing as “advise and consent”: shut up and do what I tell you. Actually, pretty much everything Bush ever says means shut up and do what I tell you.

Bush continues:

It’s a free society. There is a democratically-elected government. They’ve invited us in, and we’ll consult with them in terms of how to achieve mutual goals, and that is to rout out the remnants of al Qaeda, to deal with those folks who would come and like to create harm to U.S. citizens and/or Afghan citizens.

Invited us in?

Karzai generously forgives America for torturing and beating his country’s citizens to death: “So the prisoner abuse thing is not at all a thing that we attribute to anybody else but those individuals.” The prisoner abuse thing? “The Afghan people are grateful, very, very much to the American people.” Well, the ones in Guantanamo are just grateful very much, not very very much. “They recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on governments or on societies. These things happen everywhere.” Sure, Norway, Canada, Antarctica, everywhere. “And I’m glad to tell you that I was reading today somewhere that one of those persons has been given a sentence of prison for three months and removed from his job, and that’s a good thing.” And a jolly stiff fine, too. A soldier beats a prisoner from his country to death for, supposedly, spitting at him, and Karzai has to pretend that’s sufficient. It’s the puppet thing taken to the next level: instead of speaking while Bush drinks a glass of water, he has to speak while eating whatever shit is handed to him.

Then it’s state fair time. Bush: “President Karzai was talking about how the quality of the pomegranate that used to be grown in Afghanistan, evidently it’s quite famous for -- the country is quite famous for growing pomegranates.” I know that’s what I always think of. Bush thinks they should grow those (I don’t think he actually knows what a pomegranate is) instead of poppies. Oh and honeydews, those are nice too. “After all, Afghanistan has had a long history of farming.”

A reporter asks Chimpy about whether we’re losing in Iraq; he says, “I think they’re being defeated. And that’s why they continue to fight.” Clears that right up.