progress continues

“Not too shabby for the world’s second most corrupt country,” mused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she surveyed the results of Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections. “Sure, there was widespread fraud during this round, but only enough to affect the results in about a third of the provinces. That’s a passing grade in anybody’s book, and almost as good as South Carolina.” “I knew we could do it,” said proud president Hamid Karzai. “I knew Afghanistan could have elections that weren’t completely fraudulent. Why, all you have to do is look back at the last election of me in order to see the enormous progress we’ve made. You know, we haven’t had a bloody coup in years, which is really fortunate from my personal point of view.” “What a long strange trip it’s been,” Karzai continued, taking a deep, reflective draw on the presidential hookah. “Just in the course of my brief lifetime, Afghanistan has been a monarchy, a theocracy, we’ve had a military junta and a communist state, and here we are today, a not quite entirely corrupt Islamic Republic. We are quite the versatile country, are we not? We’ve been everything but a utopian society.” “It’s true that they’re a long way from being a utopian society, although usually when I see President Karzai he does seem to be on a higher plane,” said General David Petraeus. “The important thing is that Afghanistan is a couple steps up from a completely dystopian society, and I guess that surely justifies the American sacrifice. Whatever, I just go where they tell me to go.” “I’m reviewing the reports on the irregularities, and the thing that really stands out is the absence of total mayhem,” notes Petraeus, who admits that he’s anxious to get this legacy tarnishing tour of duty behind him. “I know there are some, like Senator McCain, who thought we would need to be in Afghanistan for a hundred years. Believe me, nobody needs that sort of heartache, and thankfully the Afghan people have stepped up. Sure, there was ballot stuffing, but that just demonstrates how much the people love voting. There was some intimidation of election officials, some vote buying, and some handcuffing and detention of election workers. But you’ll also note that no candidates were assassinated and there were no reports of massive voter execution.” “That was pretty sweet,“ agreed President Obama. “And my goodness, just look at the time. It’s already half way to August 2011. I guess we’ve done about all we can. Time to get out of Dodgedihar.”