President Karzai Lashes Out

The rambling speech of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Thursday was alarming. His delusional criticism of the United Nations and governments whose troops are risking their lives by fighting the Taliban complicates the difficult effort to stabilize Afghanistan.

And it undermines the fragile public support for President Obama’s strategy, which focuses on protecting and improving the lives of Afghan civilians as well as on defeating the Taliban.

That effort depends on credible leadership in Kabul. It has long been unclear whether Mr. Karzai can provide it, and his latest comments do not help. Rather than acknowledge his failings and seek to correct them, Mr. Karzai decided to accuse others of falsely criticizing him.

After winning a second term last year, Mr. Karzai grudgingly accepted that the vote was marred by fraud. On Thursday, he said “foreigners” did it by bribing officials and manipulating the results. The culprits? Western embassies and two officials: Peter Galbraith, the former deputy United Nations special representative to Afghanistan who helped reveal the fraud, and Philippe Morillon, who was the European Union’s chief election observer at the time of the vote.

Mr. Karzai also accused Western journalists, including reporters for The Times, of false reporting. On Friday, he called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to try to convince her that his remarks were aimed only at the press. His excuses were as unconvincing, just as his charges were preposterous. As journalists accurately reported, election monitors found major ballot-stuffing, and most of the tampering favored Mr. Karzai.

Mr. Karzai went further into hazardous territory on Thursday when he said that Western forces fighting the Taliban are on the verge of becoming “invaders.” If that conceit takes hold, it could be a disaster, rallying Afghans to the Taliban.

Mr. Karzai is not only going against the interests of the governments protecting him, but against those of his own people. On Wednesday, the lower house of Parliament rejected a revision of the election law that would have allowed him to appoint all five members of the agency that investigates election fraud and disclosed last year’s irregularities. The United Nations appoints three of the five members.

Mr. Karzai no doubt was embarrassed when Mr. Obama made his first trip to Kabul last Sunday to tell him he wasn’t moving fast enough on improving governance, curbing corruption, advancing the rule of law and devising a plan to persuade insurgents to switch sides. But Mr. Obama was exactly right, and those tasks grow more urgent as coalition forces confront their biggest target yet: the Taliban stronghold in Kandahar.

The pressure on Mr. Karzai has, at times, been applied inartfully, but Mr. Obama is right to hold him to account in ways President George W. Bush did not. He should make clear that Washington will work around him if needed, funneling aid through competent cabinet ministries and helping beef up local governments.

Mr. Karzai is encouraging those who want the United States out of Afghanistan. He risks boiling down a more complicated policy debate to the notion that American lives are being sacrificed simply to keep him in power. It’s hard to think of a better way to doom Afghanistan’s future, as well as his own.