George Will

Afghan success depends on 'stranger'

Actress Cate Blanchett is performing in Washington, portraying a flurried, anxious Blanche DuBois, in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." If Obama administration officials involved in formulating Afghanistan policy see her, they should wince when she speaks DuBois' signature line: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

The U.S. mission -- whatever it is; stay tuned -- in that fractured semi-nation depends on substantially increased competence and radically reduced corruption among the strangers governing in, if not much beyond, Kabul. One stranger is Afghanistan's president. We are getting to know him well.

On Jan. 29, 2002, just 114 days after the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush, during his State of the Union address, introduced to a joint session of Congress and a national television audience "the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan, Chairman Hamid Karzai." Interim no more, he has won -- or at least secured -- another five years in office.

Abdullah Abdullah, whom Karzai defeated in Aug. 20's ruinous election -- fraudulent ballots, bogus polling places, one third of Karzai's votes disallowed -- has decided not to participate in a runoff, partly because it was to be conducted by those who supervised the first election.

After hearing that Abdullah would withdraw, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "I do not think it affects the legitimacy. ... When President Karzai accepted (the runoff) without knowing what the consequences and outcome would be, that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward." So, the U.S. government chooses to believe that legitimacy descends upon Karzai simply because he agreed to another election controlled by his operatives. Such desperate sophistry is dismaying evidence of the mentality of the Obama administration as it contemplates the military's request for a substantial increase of U.S. forces, just eight months after the last increase.

Remember the reason given for that one? In March, Obama increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In September he said: "I did order 21,000 additional troops there to make sure that we could secure the election, because I thought that was important."

U.S. success depends on Afghans perceiving the central government as legitimate, which they will not do for at least five more years. Americans, led by a commander in chief whose heart is not in it, will not sustain the years of casualties and other costs necessary to create self-sufficient Afghan security forces beneath a corrupt regime.

On July 24, 2008, in Berlin, Obama stressed the need to "defeat the Taliban." Then, however, he spoke as a "citizen of the world," not as president. Now he is being presidential by reconsidering some implications of the politically calculated rhetoric that helped make him president. He is rightly ignoring those who cannot distinguish thinking from dithering.

Whatever strategy Obama adopts, its success cannot depend on America teaching Afghans to elect good men. If he is looking for a strategy that depends on legitimacy in Kabul, he is looking for a unicorn.

George Will writes for the Washington Post.