Well, Gibbs and his boss are more likely right than wrong regarding the substance of the Karzai Indictment. That being said it is important to add that the official White House take on the matter is irrelevant.
What counts is the internal Afghan view of Karzai's position. Inside that country the presidential spin is seen as plausible to the max. There is no reason for an Afghani, any Afghani, to believe that foreigners are either unwilling or unable to seek the "say" in the internal affairs of Afghan society and polity.
It is not that Afghans are notably paranoid. Nor are they unduly xenophobic. Rather their suspicions of the purity or disinterested nature of foreign intentions are predicated upon centuries of experience as a buffer area between large, expansionist, and aggressive imperial powers. At different times and in manifold ways Russia, China, Great Britain, India and, (say it ain't so) the US have sought to influence, control, dominate Afghanistan's internal politics.
This historical trajectory must be considered in the context of Afghanistan's existence as an agglutination of tribes. It is not a nation-state as such is understood in the West. Afghanistan does not possess a self-conscious national identity coupled with both established, secure, and defensible borders and the means of governance which assure the borders are maintained against all comers and the internal cohesiveness is kept secure against subversion.
Internally, the Afghan population is fragmented along linguistic and tribal lines so that an individual's primary allegiances run from family to clan to tribe and ultimately to linguistic group. Allegiance to the abstract, "Afghanistan," is a null referent. Also the borders of "Afghanistan" have proven to be highly mutable depending on who has the force necessary to reposition them.
Nor should the historical nature of what passes for a central government in Afghanistan be ignored. For most of its history the central regime has been nonexistent or the next thing to it. The emergence of a strong, effective central government has come about typically when the tribes are faced by an external threat too large to be countered without dependable joint effort.
During the long years of the "Great Game," both Russia and Great Britain discovered to their respective dismay that the most rapid way to create a government in Afghanistan was to invade the place. No sooner did the first column of troops enter the fuzzily understood borders of Afghanistan than a strongman leader emerged to rally the locals against the invaders.
In a very real sense that is what Karzai has been doing of late. He has been posturing himself as a true Afghan patriot resisting the crypto-invaders.
As a good and strong Afghan patriot and leader, Karzai has asserted to the local tribal leaders near Kandahar that no US, NATO, or ISAF operation will take place in their domains until and unless both he and the tribal chiefs are satisfied that the operation is necessary and will be conducted in a way which immunizes the local civilians against harm. He gave his personal word of honor that he and not the foreigners will control the military operations so that local leaders and their people can rest easy.
It was as a good and strong Afghan leader and patriot that Mr Karzai made his allegations of foreign misconduct in the presidential elections. By his strong language and the underlying reality that his message was credible to Afghan minds, Karzai positioned himself as the sole means of guaranteeing the upcoming parliamentary election will be a strictly made-in-Afghanistan affair.
Karzai's shrewd observation, "a thin curtain separates foreign assistance from a foreign invasion" is not only soundly rooted in recent Afghan history but nicely plays with his equally perceptive comment to the effect that Taliban resists foreign invaders and if the foreigners act any more like invaders than they already have he (Karzai) would join Taliban. That statement might have "troubled" the Obama White House most of all, but it has the advantage to Afghan ears of being both believable and reassuring.
The Obama administration and the Nice Young Man From Chicago himself would do well to get a grip on two ground truths.
The first of these is that Karzai is playing a longer term game than is the American government. He is looking beyond the current campaign, or the next one. He is looking beyond the stage of hostilities termination. Karzai, to his credit, is keeping his eyes on the distant prospect of conflict resolution. President Karzai wants to be presiding still when the assorted insurgents including Taliban choose to play the ancient and honorable game of let's-make-a-deal. All of his recent statements and promises so outrageous to White House ears are necessary if he is going to accomplish is long term goal of conflict resolution with Hamid Karzai sitting at the head of the table.
The other ground truth is simply there ain't a thing we can do about Karzai's seeming spirit of non-team-playing. The Afghan president in a manner identical with assorted South Vietnamese capos forty and more years ago understood that the US lacks the credible capacity to decommit from Afghanistan.
We are there for our reasons, in pursuit of our goals. We have made it apparent to the entire world that the outcome of the fighting in Afghanistan is important to our national and strategic interests. We have invested diplomatic capital as well as lives in the outcome. These limit our freedom of action, no matter how much Karzai and his coterie may infuriate and frustrate us.
Importantly, the war is now owned by Barack Obama. The go decision might have been made by Bush/Cheney. The chances for a quick and convincing success were blown by the dunderheads of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. The years from 2002 through most of 2009 were frittered away to the detriment of the US and the sole benefit of Taliban. Those considerations no longer matter.
The war now belongs to 44. His political capital and personal prestige are now on the line. To cut and run or even to reduce our level of engagement is to suffer a self-inflicted wound. It is scarcely conceivable that the combative egoist who lives behind the ingratiating smile would suffer such a wound willingly.
President Obama is mousetrapped. Karzai has the American president by the cliched "short hairs."
There is nothing Obama and company can do realistically other than grin and (at the least pretend to) like it. Unpleasant to be sure but not without some positive potential.
Insofar as Karzai buttresses his position with the Afghan people, including the soft core Taliban types, by adopting the pose of the tough, resolute, and wily Afghan patriot and leader, he lays the foundation necessary for bringing the war to an end in a way which will not be incompatible with our minimum necessary goal of "not-losing." Ironically, one of the best weapons we can use in Afghanistan is bending over and presenting our hind end for Karzai to kick.
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