Elections, Afghanistan style

What's the best way to win an election? Rig it. But what if dirty foreigners have already found out you rigged it and are making you follow your own Constitutional laws by having a second round? Run un-opposed. Works for Hamid Karzai.

Afghan officials on Monday canceled plans for a runoff presidential vote, declaring President Hamid Karzai the winner after the withdrawal on Sunday of his last remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities.

Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, said the Constitution did not require a runoff and the second-round vote had been canceled after Mr. Abdullah’s announcement that he was dropping out of the race.

And so begins another term for the man charmingly called a "Weak Partner in Time of War". Why did Abdullah Abdullah drop out? Some combination of wanting to spare Afghans the election costs and insurgent attack risks inherent in a second round of elections, an offer from the CIA of big time money like Karzai's brother gets, the emergence of a pesky red laser dot that appeared on his chest last week and kept moving from his heart to between his eyes an back to his heart over and over again, and a desire not to fall victim to another election rigging on the "rig an election once, shame on you; rig an election twice, shame on me" principle.

Finally, now that Karzai has "won", we can get down to the business of sending our last remaining troops there to start Operation Our Bad, We Really Should Have Done This Stuff Eight Years Ago, Better Late Than Never, Right? But don't worry, Afghanistan's, shall we say, contentious history with occupying forces, combined with the fact that it took us nearly eight years of bombing runs and fighting to actually conceive of a strategy, widespread corruption in the Karzai government, their drug trade economy and drug lord power hierarchy, combined with the fact that we still know little to nothing about the politics and people of the area will all be figured out....by dicking around there for another six months or so. Well, at least we've got those pesky election questions out of the way. That'll probably fix most of it.