Terry Glavin, the cofounder of the Canadian-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and a firm supporter of Western intervention in Afghanistan, tells a joke that has made the rounds in Kabul. The United Nations, sick of the corruption that is rife in the Afghan government, demands that Karzai clean things up. “Of course, of course,” Karzai replies. Then he whispers, “How much will you pay me to do it?”
Read almost any article criticizing the war in Afghanistan for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, or The New Republic and you will quickly come upon the complaint that the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt: that the United States is in bed with a gang of thieves and drug dealers. “Karzai and corruption” is practically a trope of public debate. Google the two terms and you get over one million results. And the recent Wikileaks dump has only reinforced this idea with its stories of bribery and extortion.
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