Afghanistan needs less US, more UN

First, Tom Friedman makes eminent sense. He says most major changes in the Middle East have happened when the US is NOT involved, and “nation building” in Afghanistan will surely fit the same pattern.

The U.S. military has given its assessment. It said that stabilizing Afghanistan and removing it as a threat requires rebuilding that whole country. Unfortunately, that is a 20-year project at best, and we can’t afford it. So our political leadership needs to insist on a strategy that will get the most security for less money and less presence. We simply don’t have the surplus we had when we started the war on terrorism after 9/11 — and we desperately need nation-building at home.

Yes, shrinking down in Afghanistan will create new threats, but expanding there will, too. I’d rather deal with the new threats with a stronger America.

Nice to hear Friedman spell that out in detail.

At the same time, that self-driven nation-building, if it’s to be done by a democracy, has to have a democracy based on honest, fair elections. And, per Peter Galbraith, that’s where and why more UN is needed. Especially now that we know President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt brother is on the CIA payroll, I have no doubt that Galbraith is right and the chances of election fraud are still way too high, and that the UN’s actions to stem it, before the original election round, were pitiful.

Frankly, if the UN won’t monitor the election better, and President Barack Obama did want to inject more US into the mix, he’d send American election monitors, while officially and ostentatiously cutting off Wali Karzai’s gravy train.