You know things are bad when you go to Afghanistan looking for relief.
That’s what Sen. Bob Menendez did when he set off on a visit in the thick of headlines about FBI investigations, influence-peddling and hookers. Little could he have known that his host in Kabul — Afghan President Hamid Karzai — would use their meeting to chide the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the bad example the United States is setting with regard to corruption.
But that’s just what happened. A tweet from The Washington Post’s Ernesto Londono reported that the embattled New Jersey senator got a “lecture about corruption from Karzai.” Another tweet, this one from an AP reporter, said “Karzai really laid into Sen. Menendez,”
Reuters
Hamid Karzai
In a word, yowza. Afghanistan is arguably the most crooked nation on earth, and the Karzais are its first family of corruption. Hamid’s brothers have been implicated in theft, bank fraud, drug-running and more. So getting lectured by Karzai on corruption is like being lectured on urban planning by Godzilla.
Surely it’s noteworthy that, as a connoisseur of corruption, Karzai seems to see its mark in Menendez. Innocent until proven guilty, we say — but if anyone can hold his own with a shameless president of Afghanistan, we expect it would be a senator from New Jersey.
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Foreign relations, Jersey-style
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