But rather than democracy, the United States brought Hamid Karzai, an oil pipeline lobbyist who was expected to slavishly follow U.S. orders.

"Democracy" under Karzai

Shortly after he was ensconced into power, Karzai pledged to an American audience that fighting corruption would be among his highest goals. An election was held to legitimize his power in 2004, including "get out the vote" drives threatening to burn people's houses down unless they voted for Karzai. All 15 of the opposing candidates denounced the fraud-ridden election, but that did nothing to deter Bush from taking multiple victory laps for bringing democracy to Afghanistan.

Karzai's five-year term saw the revival of the Taliban and widespread Afghan disgust at a government permeated by corruption. In March 2009, Obama ordered 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to "secure the election" coming up in August. On June 16, 2009, Obama congratulated Afghans on the start of the official election campaign: "Each nation gives life to democracy in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people…. That is why we are working with Afghan electoral authorities and the United Nations to help Afghans ensure a credible, secure, and inclusive election process." But the political campaign became more tawdry than any election in Chicago history. To bolster support from fundamentalist voters, Karzai approved a law entitling a husband to starve his wife to death if she refused his sexual demands.

When Obama spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in August 2009, he boasted that "our troops are helping to secure polling places for this week's election so that Afghans can choose the future that they want." In reality, Obama effectively sent American soldiers to serve as bodyguards for Karzai's minions to steal the election. Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission was deluged with thousands of allegations of fraud or abuse. Two weeks after the election, the New York Times reported that Karzai's operatives set up as many 800 fictitious polling sites "where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president's re-election." In some Afghan provinces, pro-Karzai ballots outnumbered actual voters by tenfold.

A few weeks later, Peter Galbraith, one of the top United Nations officials in Afghanistan, was fired after he publicly estimated that a third of Karzai's votes were bogus. Galbraith declared, "No amount of spin can obscure the fact that we spent upwards of $200 million on an election that has been a total fiasco." He lamented that "the fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners."