Our present situation in Afganistan presents a quandary. However and whenever we exit, the general wish seems to be to leave the country more stable and prosperous than when we invaded. But our very presence fuels the cause of nationalist resistance, a sentiment the Taliban have shrewdly exploited. Moreover, those Afghan politicians who depend on the UN presence have no interest in seeing a general withdrawl, and so have little incentive to accomplish the re-building of the institutions of Afghani democracy. Their calculation seems to be that if they remain corrupt and incompetent we will not leave them to the tender mercies of the resurgent Taliban. And thus the quandary. We cannot leave the country until Afghan institutions are strong enough to defend themselves against the Taliban, but we cannot actually do the work of rebuilding those institutions without undermining their legitimacy. Whether we would have wished it or no, the ultimate fate of our effort in Afghanistan is now tied to the success or failure of what has come to be known as "nation-building," and democratic nation building at that...at least so goes the common wisdom.
All of this would have been eerily familiar to the Thucydides, who chronicled the long struggle between democratic Athens, oligarchic Sparta, and the Persian monarchy during the 5th century B.C. Faced with hostile powers on two fronts, the Athenians decided to deploy as a foreign policy tool the one thing they saw as their ultimate domestic strength: democracy. Gathering together many states into so-called Delian League, the Athenians rapidly became "democratic imperialists," forcing their allies to change their internal political institutions into clones of Athens' courts, assemblies, magistrates, etc., all overseen by the watchful eye of an Athenian "overseer" backed by an Athenian garrison ensconced in each citadel. The Athenians' thinking seems to have been that if they gave their erstwhile allies "freedom" in the form of Athenian-style democracy, and protected it themselves, the people in their "democratic empire" would reflexively support their benefactors when faced with the prospect of Persian or Spartan intervention. Their calculation was wrong. Within less than a generation, the rapacity of the Athenians and their supporters in the cities had driven all their most important allies to revolt and throw in their lot with the Spartans. The view of a cynical Athenian politician near the end of the war proved prescient: 'People do not fundamentally care whether they are free under democracy or enslaved under an oligarchy; what they really want is to be able to follow their own laws and customs.'
Karzai and his cronies have no more legitimacy for most Afghans than pro-Athenian partisans came to have in the cities of the Delian League. And sadly, the role of our diplomatic and military personnel in Afghanistan is looking more and more like that of the Athenian "overseers" and garrisons. Already many Afghanis wonder which was better, the bearded barbarism of the Taliban or the venality of the current Afghan police and politicians. Manifestly fraudulent elections endorsed by UN and US officials do not reassure the Afghan people that we truly respect their sovereignty. Taliban and other tribal militias smell the rot and have begun to gather in force to challenge our already tenuous footholds in the countryside.
The only possible way out of the trap we have set for ourselves is to demand responsibility and accountability from the Afghan national government. The country does have a tradition of indigenously developed democratic governance, and that is very hopeful. If the current crop of Afghan politicians are not willing to make genuine efforts at enriching that tradition, we should feel no obligation to protect them from their own people. We cannot "save" Afghanistan from its political culture; only the Afghanis themselves can do that.
We certainly hope that such concerns are shaping the emerging White House debate on a more limited and focused mission in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border areas.