The United States has just apologized to the government of Pakistan for the inadvertent killing of two Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. Our forces mistook the Pakistani soldiers for insurgents we were pursuing.

I thought of something that Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, said at a “coffee” for journalists a couple of years ago. This was at Davos. Allow me to reprint what I wrote at the time:

Karzai talks about a man whose home was mistakenly bombed by coalition forces — this cost the man many members of his family. And someone asks why in the world Western powers are bombing innocent people. Karzai says that such mistakes are less frequent now; the coalition is making a big effort to be careful. But mistakes will happen in war, Karzai observes. Just last night — the night before our coffee — the coalition mistakenly killed nine members of the Afghan armed forces. But remember, says Karzai: The allies have lost people in such mistakes, too. The Americans have, the Canadians have . . .
Seldom have I seen a leader so cool, and unhistrionic, and un-demagogic — so mature.

We are all supposed to be against Karzai now. I’m not convinced that we Americans, or Afghanistan, can do better.