White House Officials Worried About Alleged Massacre in Afghanistan - East Idaho News
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White House Officials Worried About Alleged Massacre in Afghanistan

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P 031212 ObamaCallsKarzai?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1331557586689The White House/Pete Souza(WASHINGTON) — President Obama took the unusual step of telephoning Afghan President Hamid Karzai mid-afternoon Sunday — which was late at night, Afghanistan time.   Sources say he didn’t want to wait before conveying his condolences for what appears to be a massacre of innocent Afghan civilians, including nine children, by an American soldier.

The president and White House officials find themselves in the seemingly contradictory position of being worried about what this incident might mean — and doing everything they can to ensure that in terms of the big picture, it doesn’t mean much.

To that end, Obama’s message to Karzai was twofold: that there will be accountability for the soldier, and that the U.S. cares about these innocent victims as much as if they were American civilian victims.

The message from the White House, however, will be on focusing on the bigger picture, on handing over control to the Afghan forces and on maintaining the strategy in that country.

One senior national security aide recalled that recent events brought another example of the U.S. “weathering and working through a difficult situation that inflamed Afghan opinion and was exploited by the Taliban — the Koran burning.  It was very difficult, but within weeks we had resolved a longstanding issue with the Afghans and reached agreement on how to transfer responsibility for detainees to them.”

There is concern within the White House, however, that this incident might prompt a stronger reaction than did the Koran burning incident, possibly inflaming the Kandahar region, if not the entire country.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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