Hamid Karzai's White House welcome is a facade

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/12/karzai-white-house-welcome-facade">Hamid Karzai's White House welcome is a facade (UK Guardian)

Eager to head off questions about its long-simmering tensions with Hamid Karzai, the Obama administration is rolling out the red carpet for the Afghan leader this week, granting him unprecedented access to Washington's top brass and royal treatment denied to even the closest of US allies.

It is a calculated, pragmatic decision to engage and provide deference – in public, at least – to a man who has mused about joining the Taliban and scuttled Barack Obama's push to turn the tide in the nearly nine-year-old Afghanistan war. The move follows decisions by Obama, the consummate risk mitigator, to pick inscrutable legal scholar Elena Kagan to serve on the nation's highest court and to quickly retreat when his measured criticism of staunch US ally Israel backfired.

For imperfect as he may be, Karzai remains the product of America's long embroilment in his rugged mountainous country, and the head of a government that must gain the trust of its own people if American GIs can ever hope to come home for good.

But don't be fooled by appearances. Tensions are still boiling just below the surface. For all the pomp and circumstance of the four-day visit by the Afghan president and his posse of cabinet ministers and senior advisors to the US capital, the Obama administration is working hard behind the scenes to weaken his authority by reinforcing local governance to boost elusive stability of a war-torn country....

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