As widespread fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election was becoming clear three months ago, the No. 2 United Nations official in the country, the American Peter W. Galbraith, proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to two senior United Nations officials.
That was major league stupid. That effort was a big time effort to make sure predictions of Afghanistan as another Vietnam come true. I don't care how corrupt Karzai is, we should not under any circumstances circumvent Afghan laws and procedures in order to get rid of him or any man. The process of democracy is more important than the results in the long run. Pressure him to clean up? Of course. Work around him when we have to? Sure. but put our man in? No way. And have no doubt that he'd be viewed by Afghans as "our man" no matter what the replacement's motives and heart.
A damaged Karzai at least has the minimal legitimacy of coming through corrupt Afghan electoral procedures. How could it be better for government legitimacy to give the impression that we'll only deal with a compliant puppet?
God almighty, we won't try regime change on Iran but we had a diplomat willing with an allied Afghanistan?
In what way was this "non-criminally stupid" diplomacy let alone "smart" diplomacy.
