An Afghan runoff

Bowing to extraordinary international pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed Tuesday to a runoff election on Nov. 7 in hopes of reclaiming legitimacy for his bedraggled government.

The goodwill Karzai engendered when he was installed as the Afghan leader after the Taliban were vanquished following the 9/11 terrorist attacks has long evaporated. His government has failed to expand its authority much beyond the capital and, despite the tenacious involvement of U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban are resurgent, buoyed by Afghanis fed up with the ineptitude and corruption of the Karzai regime.

Its unsavoriness was manifest in the tainted Aug. 20 election, which has been uniformly condemned by international observers. An international audit stripped Karzai of nearly one-third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff.

The tarnished election has posed a dilemma for the Obama administration, which had hoped for a fair outcome as a sign of progress as the president considers committing thousands more troops to a war he has called essential to U.S. security.

Strategically the Afghan war indeed matters, but progress there is impossible without a stable government with the allegiance of large segments of the citizenry. Karzai's regime does not meet those standards -- maybe never has -- but counter-insurgency, which is what the American military is advocating, can work only with a reliable partner government.

Karzai's acquiescence in the runoff is a necessary first step to shoring up his regime in the eyes of his people, Washington and the world. But the election must proceed fairly, without corruption, and the winner, especially if it is Karzai, must immediately take substantial steps to cleanse his government to win the respect of the Afghanis.

Absent that commitment, the United States must rethink its strategy and scale back its military involvement.