Imagine, if you will, the unbelievable level of American hypocrisy attending the events following the August 20 presidential election in Afghanistan.

The corrupt incumbent Hamid Karzai claimed an overwhelming victory over his equally corrupt rival who sports a chant-like name, Abdullah Abdullah, in a contest seen as utterly and openly fraudulent – a view endorsed by a UN-backed body which monitored the electoral exercise. [Nobody, not even Karzai, had the presence of mind to suggest that the votes cast far in excess of the numbers on the electoral registers were, if anything, irrefutable proof that the many thousands of Afghan civilians killed since the 2002 US occupation had been miraculously resurrected just in time to register their solidarity with the dear leader.]

America, Karzai’s disillusioned patron saint of eight years’ standing, felt compelled to quietly arm-twist him to agree to a run-off election with his rival scheduled for November 7, if only to maintain the pretence of democracy at work. That triggered the frantic behind-the-scenes political horse-trading, which too has become universally accepted as an integral adjunct of democracy at work.

The Washington Post quoted one Afghan official close to Karzai as saying "an Abdullah representative handed over a document demanding 11 senior government posts, including cabinet positions, for the candidate’s supporters." Among other demands was that Attah Mohammed Noor, a strong Abdullah supporter and the Governor of Balkh province in the north, should remain in his post and that a son of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani get a cabinet seat. Abdullah’s camp was also pushing for the removal of the interior and defense ministers, both close allies of Karzai.

When the venal bargaining broke down with but a week to go for the scheduled run-off, Abdullah Abdullah again mounted his high horse to announce his withdrawal from the race as a selfless protest against a flawed electoral system before riding off into the political sunset. [All the while doubtless secure in the knowledge that the sun also rises with monotonous regularity.]

The Abdullah pull-out effectively handed incumbent Karzai a new five-year lease of life as king of the pristine poppy jungle. But that, it seemed, was the least of the surprises in store. Karzai’s eight-month old patron saint, Barack Obama, was unusually swift to congratulate him on his "re-election" while publicly calling the whole process "messy", yet concluding that Karzai’s win "was in accordance with Afghan law." [Meaning that they’d have done it differently in God’s Own Country.]

Commented Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation: "Just as Hamlet’s mother and his murderous uncle rushed to marry with unseemly haste, even before his slain father’s body was cold, the United States is hastily pretending that the Afghan election is over and done with. Now it’s time to look ahead, and to deal with the reelected President Karzai, warts and all."

But with Obama’s congratulations came a stern admonition to Karzai: eradicate rampant and endemic corruption in your administration without any further delay. [Yes, upstanding America and Americans simply don’t want to be judged guilty-by-association!]

In the event, Obama couldn’t have taken the high ground against sleaze at a worse possible moment. He got badly tripped by a New York Times revelation just about then that Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed, long suspected to be a major player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, was paid a regular retainer by none other than the Central Intelligence Agency for much of the past eight years. [After just eight months in office, could he have known? He should have. It’s not for nothing that the CIA has become notoriously known as the ‘US President’s Private Army’.]

MIT Professor and political scholar Noam Chomsky at a recent lecture at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies spelt out what he considered the ‘driving doctrine’ behind US foreign policy even under Obama. "There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world." Calling it ‘the Mafia principle’, Chomsky explained: "The Godfather does not tolerate ‘successful defiance’. It must therefore be stamped out so that others understand that disobedience is not an option."

Which brings us to a crucial question: Does anyone still believe the Bush fairytale, now adopted with gusto by BO, about the US fighting terrorists in the Tora Bora mountains so it doesn’t have to fight them back at home? [No shortage of the home-grown variety, by the way.]

The Times, London reports that Obama has given Karzai a six-month deadline, after which the US will withdraw from Afghanistan "as he doesn’t want American lives wasted for nothing" it quoted an Afghan official close to Karzai as saying.

What then is America’s real mission in Afghanistan? The answer to that question is to be found in GWB’s choice of Hamid Karzai to replace the ousted Taliban back in 2002.

Well before 9/11 and as far back as 1997, UNOCAL, a multinational US energy giant together with the Bill Clinton Administration had - to fall back on a phrase that suggests the delightfully naughty - already ‘got into bed’ with the Taliban in a continuing effort to construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian Basin in Central Asia.

The devilish Dick Cheney, then still CEO of that other notorious multinational energy vendor, Halliburton Corporation, noted at the time: "I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The Good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is." [Translation: The Good Lord is clearly a geopolitical greenhorn, but who’s to bell the cat?]

Adding his two-cents’ worth at the time, UNOCAL’s CEO John Maresca urged the US Congress to support the establishment of an investor-friendly climate in Afghanistan: ". . . we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company." [It was a revised version of the old saw ‘what’s good for GM is good for America’.]

In the event, Maresca’s prayers were answered when George W. Bush picked Hamid Karzai, a former UNOCAL consultant, to head the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan. And perhaps as added insurance, just nine days after Karzai’s ascension, Bush nominated another UNOCAL consultant Zalmay Khalilzad [and former Taliban defender, no less] as his Special Envoy to Afghanistan. [Don’t ask what that means; if you and I don’t know, we obviously don’t need to know!]

With several huge military bases already operational throughout Afghanistan – Mazar-i-Sharif airport in the extreme north of the country, massive Bagram Air Base in the suburbs of Kabul, and Kandahar International Airport in the south, to name a few of the non-secret establishments – threats of leaving Afghanistan ring hollow. Karzai, more than anyone else, knows the motivations for America’s presence in Afghanistan. [No wonder his ‘victory speech’ included a reference to the Taliban as "his brothers". Time to start talking turkey.]

So who’s fooling whom?

The Caspian Basin beckons. It’s the oil pipeline, stupid!