So if you fail to put the accountability and the institutions in place.  No one is going to say, oh it is 2009, we have to have accountability this year, but they will say, oh, oh it is 2009, we have to have elections this year and you end up in a situation like we ended up with I think, this winter and spring in Afghanistan where there were a lot of people in the international community who really would have liked to have postponed the elections this year.  And I think from a pragmatic perspective it might have been a good idea with the insecurity and the fact that Afghanistan and the presidential and parliamentary elections are not held at the same time. They should be held at the same time for economic and all other sorts of reasons and so there was kind of some discussion, why don’t we postpone the presidential election at least until next year, hopefully the situation will be better and then we can save some money and what happens of course is that all of the opposition to Karzai stands up and say, we have a constitution here and it says Karzai will no longer be legitimate leader in May 2009.  It is the international community that basically stood over us and made us agree to this constitution now saying that we shouldn’t follow it and that Karzai should continue as the leader even though there are other aspirants to this democracy that you forced upon us, it is a really, really difficult position to be in. And ultimately I think we end up saying well we can’t stand against the principal of elections and democracy, so we will hold elections even though we know that the systems of accountability, the institutions that are needed to create real democracy are not there.  We have had this horrible over simplification of democracy.  Elections are not democracy.   Elections can be anti-democratic if you don’t have the proper institutions and rule of law in place to embed those elections then.  But, ultimately if you don’t hold elections then you are certainly engaging in anti-democratic practices and it just ultimately becomes impossible for us to refuse, it is a real conundrum and I obviously don’t have a good solution but I understand where it comes from.

Speaker 1: Okay, over here, you had a question and then i think this will be the last or one after that, just one more [???] here and there. Go ahead.

Speaker 7: Okay Christian [???] International Rescue Committee.  Alex, how do you see state side how do you see the delay in the election results affecting the Obama Administrations, the discussions they have right now as well as the timeline and the ultimate strategy, does that really impact the decision or is it kind of as you said at the beginning something that is just an added, they are very, very poorly times but does it not really affect our decision what do you think on that one?

Speaker2: First of all let me say, I love IRC a lot of people that I have worked with over the many, many years in Afghanistan and Pakistan ever on time worked with IRC and so they do terrific work.  I think that the answer to the question is unfortunately it is having an impact and that is because the level of doubt that has very suddenly erupted among the American population and the US congress about our ability to do a good job in Afghanistan as being fed by this election crises. It wasn’t caused by it but eight months ago we were not having this debate.  Afghanistan was the good war, there was no serious debate in the presidential campaign about whether we should do more in Afghanistan, both candidates said we are going to do more.  Obama got elected, he immediately added more troops, added more money, put in a robust team, added Richard Holbrooke, put the embassy on steroids.  I was just in Kabul recently and there are 6 ambassadors in our embassy now headed by a former four-star general.  They fired their commander [???] the first time they have done that in you know, something like 50 years to put in the new hot shot, you know, [???] counter insurgency superstar.