PARIS -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swept into Kabul last Thursday to rain on Afghan President Hamid Karzai's second-term inauguration parade.
Clinton commanded Karzai reduce rampant corruption in Afghanistan so Washington could justify sending more troops. She is the former first lady of Arkansas, a state acclaimed for high ethics and good governance.
Perhaps she brought election monitors from Chicago, where the dead rise to vote for the Democratic machine. From Ohio, where funny voting machines helped George Bush win re-election or from those bastions of Athenian democracy, New Jersey and Florida. They have so much to teach delinquent Afghans.
Afghanistan is corrupt, like all third world nations, but compared to his western critics, poor Hamid Karzai is a mere beggar in the Kabul bazaar.
Take Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, who thundered at Karzai to root out corruption. It was Britain that gave rise to the delightful synonym for bribery, "the white man's handshake."
Three years ago, Brown and former boss Tony Blair quashed Britain's biggest ever criminal investigation by its Serious Fraud Office into accusations the arms firm EADS paid some $3.5 billion in secret kickbacks to high Saudi officials. The EU rebuked Britain for its "tolerance of corruption."
France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, also blasted Karzai over corruption. This right after Sarko quashed a judicial investigation of three thieving but useful African dictators who had stashed away billions of swag in France.
Next, Transparency International, a respected NGO monitoring state corruption, published its annual honesty survey.
New Zealand was named the world's least corrupt nation. Canada was ranked eighth most honest and least corrupt nation in the western hemisphere. Hats off to Canada.
Embarrassingly, the United States ranked a miserable 19th. The report noted, "the U.S. Congress is most affected by corruption." Mark Twain called Congress, "America's native criminal class."
Western Europe and Japan were way ahead of the U.S. America's ally Israel ranked a sorry 32nd. Other U.S.-Mideast allies had awful scores, the Gulf emirates excepted.
An important Los Angeles Times investigation reports hundreds of millions of dollars, a full third of the CIA's foreign budget, goes to payoffs to Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, and politicians.
American "black" programs deliver more tens of millions to Pakistan's ruling Peoples Party and leader, Asif Zardari, known to all Pakistanis as "Mr. 10%."
Zardari has been dogged for decades by corruption charges. He denies them and claims they are all politically motivated.
The U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the past eight years to support the Afghan War, not counting huge bounties for capturing or killing suspected enemies.
Some estimates say $10 billion delivered to Iraq's U.S.-installed regime are missing. American "contractors" and large corporations in Iraq are accused of gargantuan fraud. Pallets of U.S. $100-dollar bills vanished into thin air. And on it goes.
Ironically, across the Muslim world, the same western powers scourging Karzai are seen as major sources of corruption, keeping a repressive regime in power by buying dictators, generals and politicians.
Many Afghans support the Taliban because it is seen as an enemy of corruption and an enforcer of justice, however harsh.
The Transparency International report finds, to no surprise, that places like Somalia, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the world's most corrupt nations. But it must be remembered that citizens of these benighted nations pay no income taxes. So each government official levies his own little personal taxes. What we call corruption is inevitable.
President Karzai will of course establish an anti-corruption commission. Some big turbans will be prosecuted to please Washington. But this charade will fool no one but U.S. voters.
Most Afghans see Karzai as a U.S. puppet. But maybe the exasperated puppet will turn on his string-pullers, open peace talks with the Taliban and demand the U.S. pull its occupation army out of Afghanistan. India is said to be waiting to take over the care and feeding of the Karzai regime.
eric.margolis@sunmedia.ca
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