Democracy for the sake of spin

Karzai has been sworn in as Afghan President as a result of the recent cosmetic election.

Three years after the fall of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai was sworn in Tuesday as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president in a dignified, heavily guarded ceremony attended by hundreds of Afghan and foreign guests, including Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In a brief inaugural address, Karzai expressed his thanks to the Afghan people, who defied Taliban threats to vote in largely peaceful national elections in October, and to the United States, which led the international coalition that ousted the Islamic fundamentalist regime in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

So what does it mean? In reality not much. The facts is Karzai is still little more than the mayor of Kabul and can't leave his compound guarded by US Special Forces without a contingent of US Special Forces. Warlords and the Taliban still control most of the country and the center piece of the Afghan economy remains opium production. All of the administrations spin aside, the Taliban and al Queda still have free run of large parts of the country and of course Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Are the Afghan people better off? With the NGO's, like Doctors Without Borders, pulling out, in most the country the answer is probably no. While the elections may have given the Afghan people a good feeling they really didn't change anything, just more spinning a failure into a success.