Karzai Waxed Poetic About 'Golden Age' of Bush

The White House doesn't bring Hamid Karzai flowers anymore, and the Afghan president is caught in a diplomatic cable waxing poetically over "the golden age" of US-Afghan relations under George W Bush. The cable was sent by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry last year after a meeting with Karzai, reports the Huffington Post. Eikenberry admonished Karzai, diplomatically, we assume, to get his head in the present. From the cable:

"Karzai then returned to a familiar theme, his wish for Afghan-US relations to recover the spirit of 2002-04—a period Karzai sees as a 'golden age' in the relationship," wrote Eikenberry in a July 16, 2009, cable. "He would like for US forces to again be able to drive their humvees through villages, greeted warmly by villagers who would shout, 'Good morning, Sergeant Thompson.' Karzai claimed, as he has many times, that his concern over the erosion of public trust in the US was a driving factor in his increasingly strident criticism regarding civilian casualties, night raids and detentions." (More Hamid Karzai stories.)