If Americans claim not to understand Afghan corruption, P.J. O’Rourke says, we’re lying.
Bribery has been a dominant part of our foreign policy in Afghanistan, the way it’s been a dominant part of everyone’s foreign policy in Afghanistan including al Qaeda’s. What we Americans don’t understand about Afghan corruption is why it’s so transparent, just a matter of openly taking money. Don’t the Afghans know that you should take bribes indirectly — by collecting publicity, popularity, public recognition, prestige, influence, and, most of all, power? Then big corporations put you on their boards of directors and that’s when you get the money. Meanwhile you’ve been riding in government cars, flying on government planes, eating out of the government pork barrel (lamb barrel in Afghanistan), so why worry about payoffs up front?
Afghans have failed to move their corruption from the Rod Blagojevich model, which we all deplore, to the Barack Obama model, which we all admire.