No Nation To Build

Afghanistan continues to look like a lost cause for the U.S.  Karzai, quite possibly the world's best-dressed dictator, keeps behaving like a rebellious son, defying his elders in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West.  His latest effrontery is the refusal to let the Parliament sit, alleging that it wasn't duly elected because of widespread fraud. Instead, he has appointed a commission to look into it.  Meanwhile, there is no legislative power to speak of.

The U.S. and its acolytes, who hailed this "democratic" Afghanistan, are embarrassed, to say the least, by Karzai's unwillingness to play by the rules. The fact is that tribalism dies hard and that democracy demands an intellectual sophistication that is rarely present in some parts of the world.  Thousands of years of tradition cannot be changed by invasions and occupations.  Many people, Karzai included, go through the motions of the democratic process, but there is no underlying culture and, therefore, no real commitment to support it.

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