Clinton Adviser Now Advising Karzai Rival
The Obama administration is pretty much resigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai winning reelection next month. The administration considers Karzai to be
Jul 31, 2020170K Shares2.4M Views
The Obama administration is pretty much resigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai winning reelection next month. The administration considers Karzai to be corrupt and incompetent. And yet no real viable alternative candidate has emerged. Pledged not to interference in the election, there’s not much that the Obama team can do but sigh and mend fences with Karzai.
Which makes it really hard to understand how James Carville has signed on to work for probably-hopeless candidate Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister with more of a following in Washington than in Afghanistan, given that Carville is a close confidante of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Bloomberg reportsthat Carville doesn’t think there’s a problem:
“„“I don’t think anybody would veto me doing this,” said Carville, 64, who said he has worked on campaigns in 18 countries. “I’ve worked in Israel when Bill Clinton was president. It’s what I do.”
Bloomberg’s Indira A.R. Lakshmanan gets a quote from State Department spokesman Ian Kelly saying Clinton and the department aren’t concerned about Carville working for Ghani. But the perception that Carville represents a Clintonite thumb on Ghani’s side of the Afghan electoral scale is kind of unavoidable. Why Ghani thinks that might help him — as elections approach in Afghanistan, Karzai has grown more critical of the U.S., not less — is bewildering, but that might be an indicator of Ghani’s flaws as a candidate. Carville is clearly free to advise whomever he wants, and it’s neither his fault nor his responsibility that Clinton is the U.S.’s top diplomat. But this may be another bit of turbulence that the U.S. and Karzai will have to overcome after the August election.
Paolo Reyna
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Paolo Reyna is a writer and storyteller with a wide range of interests. He graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies.
Paolo enjoys writing about celebrity culture, gaming, visual arts, and events. He has a keen eye for trends in popular culture and an enthusiasm for exploring new ideas. Paolo's writing aims to inform and entertain while providing fresh perspectives on the topics that interest him most.
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