I was traveling when the Afghanistan issue hit the frontburner and I’ve never been able to fully catch up with the Obama administration’s argument on how the “flawed” Afghan elections require a complete rethink of the grand new strategy for Afghanistan Obama introduced to much fanfare last spring. Part of my confusion is that Obama doesn’t seem to much care about flawed elections anywhere else. The Iranian elections didn’t seem to change U.S. policy toward Iran. Successful elections in Iraq never seemed to have much bearing on his intentions there. Upcoming elections in Honduras have already been declared illegitimate by the White House so long as the Chavez-wannabe Zelaya is out of power, even though Zelaya was never supposed to be on the ballot in the first place and the only way he could be on it would be through unconstitutional election fraud. But that’s all a topic for another time.

What really confuses me is the idea that Obama’s national-security team was really taken by surprise by electoral fraud in Afghanistan. Was this possibility not even imagined in their first grand strategy? Election fraud is bad, but I don’t think anyone finds it surprising in a place like Afghanistan, do they? Yet for some reason, “flawed” elections forced Joe Biden to completely reverse his previous positions on the war in Afghanistan almost overnight. Flawed elections required Obama to completely rethink why we’re there and what we’re trying to do in this “war of necessity” (his words).

Call me crazy, but if no one at the White House or Pentagon or State Department imagined that there might be “flawed” elections in Afghanistan when — apparrently — their entire strategy depended on full and fair elections, then they should all be fired.

Or maybe I missed something that would clear all this up for me?