Michael Fumento

"If I come under foreign pressure, I might join the Taliban," Afghan President Hamid Karzai allegedly told several members of his nation's parliament Monday. The U.S. reaction should be: "Don't let a camel bite you on the butt on the way out."Hey, Hamid! We've got your address!

As I write in my Forbes Online article, "The Karzai Conundrum," including knowledge I gleaned while embedded in Afghanistan, Karzai is displeased because we're displeased with him.

But it's not a standoff. We have excellent reasons. Even by Afghan standards he's crooked. Worse, he's become arrogant - "King Karzai" in his own mind. If we are to win the war he either needs to undergo a character transformation on the order of Ebenezer Scrooge's, or we need him gone.