Hypocrisy

It is really ironic that western nations are bearing down on the Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, demanding that he crack down on corruption, when western leaders are unable to do anything at all about the immense web of corruption that has almost brought the western financial system to its knees.

This is cognitive dissonance at its best. There is a great deal of public anger building about outrageous banker bonuses at previously bailed out companies, but there is precious little that any western government can do to sling a few sorry, pin-striped behinds into jail as a warning to other transgressors. In the meantime, increasing numbers of people are out of jobs, school budgets are being cut left, right and center, and within the next year, many people may have to choose between food and home heating as energy prices are expected to rise. Not to mention, those pesky tea partiers are likely to party even harder this summer.

Given this dismal state of affairs at home, all the lecturing and hectoring of the (no-doubt) corrupt Afghans fail to leave any observer impressed. It especially fails to impress the observer with a keen sense of observation and irony. You see, dear formerly great wielders of global authority, information is now available to anyone with an internet connection and a Web browser. The old game of "do as I say, not as I do" is less and less of an option when a) you're broke and b) you are unable to clean out your own pig sty first.

There is a way, however, to get the Afghan government to conform to one's (abstract, theoretical) moral standards of fiscal integrity - threaten to leave, taking all the troops with one. The military option is really the only real leverage that donor nations have. Just don't invoke "values", "integrity" and "efficiency" as leverage against Afghan official corruption - doing so will only result in resounding and mocking laughter all around. Better still, let's get this fiscal mess sorted out here first, then we will all be in a position to lecture again.