Sense on Afghanistan?

Here's the news revealed today about the Administration's approach to Afghanistan:

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States.
...

“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.”
...

The election in Afghanistan was so badly marred by allegations of fraud that they helped prompt Mr. Obama to rethink the strategy he unveiled just in March, officials have said. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., among others at the White House, had already soured on Mr. Karzai, whose government and family are accused of corruption and ties to drug dealing. The election reinforced those doubts, officials said.

This sounds to me like the opposite answer that we gave in Vietnam, the opposite of trying to prop up a corrupt regime that will just look at the U.S. as fools with money to waste on them. I'd be interested to see if there's consensus agreement among Nettertainment readers on this, since I haven't seen as much divergence on the Afghanistan issue as, say, health insurance reform.

After all, Karzai appears to be stonewalling any attempt at an honest election result:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai may not accept the results of a vote recount from the summer's general election, officials from his campaign hinted, adding a further twist to the already fraught post-poll political environment. On Sunday, his supporters began demonstrations against "foreign interference" in the elections.

As they await the results of a recount to try to adjust for widespread fraud, officials from the Karzai campaign began over the weekend to cast aspersions on the process, centering their criticism on the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which is re-tallying the numbers. The commission finished its audit Saturday, and is reviewing it before releasing it in coming days. If Mr. Karzai is found to have less than 50% of the vote, it could force a run-off with his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Sounds like a little too much like Iran, doesn't it?