Karzai is a man in a real bind, as described here.

"Even in Kabul the president, who became a father for the first time at 49 this month, rarely moves outside the heavily fortified marbled palace."

In a "democracy" where the government has an effective presence only in a couple of major cities and in areas under continuous foreign military occupation, reconstruction doesn't occur. Any claims to the contrary have to be regarded as bureaucratese, budget justifications which logically cannot be occurring in a countryside controlled by hostile forces. I haven't seen any indication that Karzai's bodyguards are Afghani, instead being US Special Forces and foreign mercenaries. It's not much of a "democracy" where the president isn't safe from his own people.

Karzai begged Bush to not forget Afghanistan in the rush to invade Iraq.

Iran is bordered on two sides by countries which have American invaders trying to establish puppet governments. And American hostility to Iran is well-known. It would be silly to expect them to not try to protect themselves.

I guess the bottom line is that the US has abandoned any significant reconstruction efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, as a matter of fact, Bush announced once that the US destabilized the country, it was the responsibility of the ROW to put it back together. That after he told the Afghanis the US wouldn't abandon them.

Arf