Blame Karzai for the Afghan's mob rampage against UN workers

The president we all once took for an enlightened leader a decade ago, when he so handsomely strode into America in his cape and karakul hat – but whose regime has since turned out to be as sleazy and corrupt as any the U.S. has ever had to partner with – decided that he couldn’t let a chance for short-term political gain slip away, no matter the potential for deadly violence in his already war-ravaged country. So Karzai pronounced Jones’ isolated deed “a crime against a religion” and a “disrespectful and abhorrent act.” To further stoke enmity against America and the West, he said the U.N. and the U.S. were responsible for bringing Jones to justice (which, of course, given our First Amendment protections, the U.S. can’t do unless officials can prove Jones somehow violated a fire code)…

Had Karzai not tried to score some unprincipled defender-of-the-faith points from his perch in Kabul last week, few if any Afghans would have known about the March 20 Koran “trial” in Florida. Which means a few Afghan mullahs wouldn’t have encouraged several hundred outraged Muslim demonstrators to march on the U.N. mission in Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday to demand the “justice” Karzai called for. When some of those protesters grabbed weapons from U.N. guards and began firing before storming the U.N. compound, 12 people – including seven U.N. personnel – ended up killed.