After agonizing for weeks on what to do about the deteriorating situation in Afganistan and Pakistan, the White House has finally come up with an excuse for not deciding: blame it on President Karzai’s lack of legitimacy. But when did they discover this?

Did the White House really need to send Rahm Emanuel to co-opt CNN and CBS’ Face the Nation and send David Axelrod to ABC’s This Week, all to deliver a White House message to President Karzai?

That message is too clever by half: we can’t possibly decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan until the US is assured it has a “credible partner” in the Afghan government. From CNN via HuffPo:

“It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop levels if in fact you haven’t done a thorough analysis of whether in fact there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing,” said the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The message to Karzai is that he’d better be cooperative in ending the uncertainty about the Presidental elections, either by agreeing to a timely runoff with his nearest rival or, if “timely” is a problem, at least agree to some power-sharing arrangement that will lend some legitimacy to the interim regime.

But the political message to the American people is that no one should expect Obama to make a quick decision — how convenient! — until the smoke clears in Kabul. When will that occur?

The argument that we should not be asking American troops to fight to preserve a regime that has no viability or legitimacy of its own is easily understood. The problem is that this dilemma has been there all along; it didn’t arise because of the election fraud.

Neither the US nor the Afghans needed the alleged ballot box stuffing to tell them the regime was thoroughly corrupt and lacked legitimacy. And long before the elections, the Afghans already knew the Afghan security forces were ineffective and insufficient; it’s not news that there is little or no functioning federal government outside the capital and a few cities, if that.

So what does the latest test for Karzai mean and how can he, or anyone else, pass it? If Karzai could not establish a credible government with the help of 68,000 US troops fighting the Taliban and tens of thousands of NATO troops guarding the cities, what exactly is supposed to happen that will change that reality?

It seems the latest rationale for delay is just another excuse for the Administration’s unwillingness to admit the obvious: that no one really believe the US can, as a foreign occupying power, create a functioning nation out of Afghanistan, no matter how many troops we send or how long we’re willing to occupy the country.

Think Progress: John Kerry sends the same message.