# Posted 1:17 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ACCOUNTABILITY WATCH: Some of you may have noticed that it has been more than two weeks since the last edition of Accountability Watch. As it turns out, it didn't matter that I forgot about last week's edition since one year ago in mid-August I was on vacation in Northern California.

One year ago this week, there was a blackout across the Northeast that didn't result in any more pregnancies than usual. One year ago this week also marked the publication's of Josh's excellent cover story in the Weekly Standard about the travails of the BBC.

My main publication for the week was a three-part memo on the state of the world, written on behalf of an unnamed friend of mine at a political consulting firm. While one might challenge any number of points I made in the memo, there is one that stands out above all the others as possibly faring worst in the glare of hindsight.

One year ago in Iraq, American fatality rates were below one per day and the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad was still to come. Thus, with considerable confidence I wrote that Iraq had much better prospects than Afghanistan for making progress toward establishing a democratic order.

At the time, "Conventional wisdom suggest[ed] that neither is probable." Yet if my reading of the situation is now correct, journalists are beginning to sense that Afghanistan may become something of a success story, whereas Iraq has borne out their expectations of state failure.

On Saturday, I had the chance to sit down with a foreign correspondent recently returned from Iraq. Without the slightest reservation he said that American soldiers are dying for nothing because as soon as they leave there will be a civil war. I disagreed hesitantly, because it is very hard to contradict someone who has had his boots on the ground while mine have been firmly planted in the library.

This week, my friend departs for Afghanistan. While Seymour Hersh has denounced the American occupation there as a fiasco, others are beginning to sense that there may be a real democratic opening in spite of the warlords and the heroin trade.

The question is 'Why?' Multilateralists can argue that the presence of a multinational force made all the difference. Yet given the less than impressive size of that force, such an argument isn't exactly tenable.

Administration supporters might argue that if things turn out better than expected in Afghanistan, it's because the media underestimated the White House's and Pentagon's efforts. I find that argument unpersuasive as well, since it's hard to point to anything particularly impressive that the United States has done.

Of course, it may be far too early for anyone to start taking credit for Afghanistan. It's a nation that has been under the radar for quite some time now. However, it will soon return to center stage, at least briefly, during September's presidential elections. Perhaps then we will know if there has been an unheralded miracle in Kabul, or whether this optimist's unusual pessimism was actually justified.

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