Et Tu, Karzai?

The title is borrowed from the famous Shakespearean play, "Julius Caesar", when the central character has just been stabbed several times by the members of Rome's Senatorial conspiracy. When finally he is given the death blow by the head conspirator, Brutus, who is supposedly Caesar's friend, Caesar gasps his final words, "Et tu Brute?", or Latin for, "You too Brutus?". This supposedly carries the secular shock value of Jesus' own words when He is betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and says, "Betrayest thou me with an kiss, Judas?" ( K.J.V.) The obvious difference being that Jesus was not really surprised since He had told His disciples that Judas would betray Him at the last supper, and immediately told Judas to go ahead and do it, because He knew it had to be done. He knew he couldn't be resurrected without first being crucified. But, I digress.

My point is that someone in the news today has just expressed an outlandish, and blatantly self-serving betrayal of American international aid that perhaps doesn't rank in importance to that of Caesar's, and certainly doesn't approach that of Christ's, but has to rank highly among any list for blatant audacity. President Karzai, of Afghanistan, on the brink of American troop withdrawal from his country has decided to blame our troops for joining forces with the enemy ( the Taliban) in carrying out several incursions against Afghan troops over the past two years. This, after our forces spent several years training these same Afghan troops, our forces are supposed to have decided to attack them, along with our hated enemies! What audacious paranoia, and obvious self-serving betrayal on his part!

It seems obvious to me that Karzai is setting us up for his soon-to-be "jumping ship", and getting out of town, "without passing 'Go'". He has been rumored for years to be socking away what may be billions of American foreign aid money, probably in private Swiss bank accounts for just such an emergency bail-out, when it becomes clear that the Taliban are almost certain to re-take control of Afghanistan's government. Now he seems to be setting us all up for an excuse as to why he "must" do so, ostensibly because of a supposed "American betrayal". I guess he feels this will protect him from later Taliban assassination attempts. I frankly doubt it, since the number one form of entertainment in the Muslim world seems to be suicide-bombing, followed closely by genocidal murder. Good luck Karzai, maybe your billions in graft will buy you a place in Heaven! But don't hold your breath.