After the death of Osama bin Laden, the key question to address is -- what's next? Bin Laden's death presents an opportunity to fundamentally reassess U.S. policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also creates the possibility for a second strategic shift in America's overall national security approach on President Obama's watch.

The first strategic shift was the Obama administration's efforts from 2009 to 2011 to end the war in Iraq by a set date and shift resources to the neglected fronts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The remaining time in office presents the chance to pivot to broader challenges in the world. In the words of Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, the administration's overall foreign policy approach is: "Wind down these two wars, reestablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime."

Eliminating bin Laden was a major success -- but it also reminds us that business as usual will no longer do. With Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning of mission creep, it is time to take a step back, reassess, and debate broader policy options in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

America has achieved many of its core objectives -- Osama bin Laden is dead and his network in the two countries is on the defensive. Even before bin Laden's death, U.S. intelligence agencies last year assessed that al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen, was a greater threat to U.S. homeland security than al Qaeda Core. Now the central task is to motivate the leaders of these two troubled nations to take greater responsibility and get them to lead in building the best political, military and economic infrastructure possible for their country. An endless stream of blank checks is counterproductive in this effort.

Pakistan is the most complicated and dangerous piece of the puzzle, yet that troubled country usually takes a backseat to Afghanistan in America's debates. In the last two years, the Obama administration has tried multiple approaches to shape the calculations of Pakistan's leaders: tripling non-military assistance to Pakistan, engaging in assertive diplomacy with a broader range of Pakistani leaders in a series of strategic dialogues, reaching out to the Pakistan public in senior official visits, and executing Predator drone strikes and unilateral military actions when it could not trust Pakistan to take action against militant groups. 

With Vice President Joseph Biden now in Pakistan and several top Pakistani officials in Washington for Richard Holbrooke's memorial service this week, there's an opportunity for the Obama administration to address a long-standing weakness of its policy in the region -- the absence of a clear plan to leverage U.S. resources to support political and economic reforms in Pakistan. Certainly, the Obama administration has, in just two years, increased resources for both Pakistan and Afghanistan, but its current strategy suffers from two basic and encompassing flaws.

Restrepo, a documentary that tracks an Army platoon serving in a dangerous part of northeast Afghanistan near the Pakistani border a little more than two years ago, arrives as a summer of discontent and uncertainty over the Afghanistan war unfolds in America. As I watched the opening scenes of the movie, a wave of déjà vu washed over me -- I have seen this movie several times before, and it doesn't end nice.

Restrepo is the movie of the year that Americans should see but most won't. The film won't likely compete with the choices of an American public seeking distraction from economic malaise, an oil spill, and not least but usually last as an afterthought in our national consciousness: a war in Afghanistan not going so well. Restrepo has one similarity with many of the box office hits of the summer -- the latest installments of the Twilight saga, Toy Story, and Shrek or revamped versions of the Karate Kid and an updated movie version of the 1980s television show the A-Team -- they are all retreads containing figments of the past and similarities to previous movies.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington this week offers Barack Obama's administration an opportunity to address one of the weakest links in its Afghanistan strategy -- the lack of a coherent plan for what the United States and its Afghan and international partners aim to leave behind in Afghanistan.

Nearly nine years into the war, we lack clear answers to two fundamental questions: How does this war end? What is the desired sustainable end state in Afghanistan?

Recent briefings, meetings, and congressional testimony with officials in the Obama administration and visiting Afghan officials have left me not much clearer about the answers to those two questions -- and this week is an excellent opportunity for the Obama administration and visiting Afghan officials to answer these two questions.

During the past month, I asked Obama administration officials and Afghan government representatives direct questions such as the estimated cost to completion for Afghanistan,  general estimates on how many Afghan government personnel will be needed to fill the various levels of Afghan institutions to make them viable, and how progress will be measured. Instead of clear answers, I usually heard general restatements of the basic principles of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine: that the United States is trying to build up Afghan governing institutions as part of an overall strategy centered on the notions of "clear, hold, and build" -- clearing areas of insurgents, holding those areas, and building institutions. For the most part, few concrete details have been offered -- like a religious creed, COIN mantras were repeated, but vague answers to the crucial implementation questions on institution-building remain the norm, which is a dangerous proposition.

After spending a historic amount of money in Afghanistan, the United States is still in search of a sustainable governance strategy that will leave behind something of consequence in Afghanistan. On the reconstruction front alone, the United States has appropriated more than $50 billion, and the Obama administration has requested an additional $20 billion. With these new requests, the United States will have spent in Afghanistan more than double what it spent in postwar Germany from 1946 to 1952 and more than four times what was spent in Japan (inflation adjusted), according to data compiled by the Congressional Research Service. Despite all this money, it seems that in many parts of Afghanistan, the United States is starting from scratch and the gap between what is said is being done on institution-building and what is actually being done is significant.

Case in point -- take the infamous "government in a box" idea put forth by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the recent operation in Marjah. McChrystal said that a central part of the operation was to bring in a local Afghan administration aimed at getting services working and delivering aid. But as many observers and journalists noted, when that government in a box was opened, there wasn't much inside. In advance of Kandahar operations this spring, U.S. military officials have emphasized the centrality of promoting good governance. In putting so much emphasis on governance in their strategic communications, the United States risks remaking the same mistake it made in advance of last year's flawed presidential election -- overpromising on something that may be difficult to deliver. As I argued in this piece last year, the Obama administration made a mistake in saying in advance that the presidential election were the most important event of the year in Afghanistan and then issuing an early judgment on the election that was too rosy.

I highlight all of this as a strong supporter of the need to integrate diplomacy, development assistance, and good governance in places like Afghanistan. I've co-authored numerous reports and articles that helped form the basis of the "smart power" approach the Obama administration is trying to use in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan -- reports like "Integrated Power" and my 2008 book with Nancy Soderberg, The Prosperity Agenda. The Obama administration is doing a much better job wrestling with these questions than George W. Bush's administration, which neglected Afghanistan and Pakistan for years. What troubles me is the lack of clarity about the implementation plan for getting the job done in Afghanistan -- if we don't know precisely want we want to achieve, then we risk open-ended involvement.

What to do about this? First, we need an honest accounting of the capacity challenges among our Afghan partners. In recent congressional testimony, including last week's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Marjah, administration officials have highlighted the lack of capacity among Afghan partners as a serious challenge. What the overall action plan for addressing these enormous capacity challenges is remains unclear. But getting specific answers to questions like how many Afghan civilian government positions need to be filled at the various levels of government and what does the overall potential pool of talent looks like would be a start.

Secondly, we need to have greater candor about just how constrained and limited U.S. civilian agencies are and more honesty on how long it might take them to deliver on institution-building in Afghanistan. Decades of underinvestment in the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development means that Obama administration officials are fighting an uphill battle to get the right talent in place to help implement the complicated task of Afghan institutional development.

Finally, the Obama administration should work with the Afghan government and its partners in the international community to present a more sustainable plan for Afghanistan in the long term. This year alone, the United States is planning to spend upwards of $100 billion in Afghanistan in operations, almost 10 times the amount of Afghanistan's GDP of $12 billion. These figures do not include what other countries are spending. These large figures raise the question of sustainability and whether what the United States is building with its partners will be able to stand on its own. There isn't enough discussion about how to transition to a self-sustaining funding model -- one that looks at how key revenue-generating industries such as mining, agriculture, and telecommunications can help build the economy and develop a funding mechanism that can sustain the Afghan institutions the international community is working to build today.

These three issues -- the capacity challenges of the United States' Afghan partners, the institutional shortcomings in U.S. civilian agencies, and the long-term sustainability questions linked to Afghanistan -- should be front and center this week. The Afghan government is planning a conference in Kabul in a few months to present specific plans for reconstruction in a follow-up to the January London conference -- but this week's meetings in Washington can help hone those plans.

The United States and Afghanistan have a long list of items to discuss in their meetings here in Washington, but shouldn't forget to address the most fundamental question: How will this war end?

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.  

By Brian Katulis

One striking thing about the president's speech last night was how little he actually said about Pakistan, especially in comparison to his speech last March outlining the initial strategy.

He didn't ignore Pakistan last night -- the country got around 25 mentions, but that's down from more than 40 references in the March speech, which was actually shorter in length compared to last night's speech. But beyond the simple metric of how many mentions Pakistan received, the speech was particularly empty on the substance of what we are doing and planning to do about Pakistan in our policy approach, and actually offered fewer details than were presented in March.

President Obama reiterated many of the main points about why Pakistan is important to Afghanistan and the broader region, and then slipped into vague generalities about what the U.S. is actually doing or trying to do with Pakistan -- "a partnership with Pakistan that is built on mutual interest, mutual respect, and mutual trust." He also went on to mention resources going to support Pakistan's democracy and development, and he highlighted the fact the United States is the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.

But anyone looking for the "way forward" in Pakistan -- that part of the speech was missing in action.

On the one hand, this may be understandable -- his main audience last night was the American public, and adding more details on the complex situation in Pakistan may have just served to further confuse what was already a complicated, overly triangulated speech trying to please multiple audiences. He was trying to pack a lot of information into one speech, and quite frankly all of the troops and nearly most of the additional money he's going to be asking for is going to Afghanistan - rather than to Pakistan. So speaking less about Pakistan may make some sense. In addition, from a strategic communications perspective, he was also trying to send messages to the Pakistani people and leadership, and the flurry of diplomatic activity and military and intelligence coordination we've seen between the United States and Pakistan -- hardly a week goes by without a senior U.S. official traveling to Islamabad -- demonstrates that there are many aspects of our bilateral relationship that won't be discussed publicly.

Yet on the other hand, the dearth of information about the next steps in Pakistan in a speech that was billed as the way forward in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is troublesome on its own merits -- because the global security interests are much greater in Pakistan than they are in Afghanistan. We've all heard the list of interests in play in Pakistan -- it has nuclear weapons, plays host to multiple terror networks, and it has more than five times as many people as Afghanistan.

Having more clarity and delivering more on the way forward in Pakistan is particularly important given something Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in his assessment three months ago: "Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan."

Last night, President Obama actually confused this very important issue -- and conflated the various elements of the Afghan Taliban, which often receive support from Pakistani authorities, with the Pakistani Taliban, which have been attacking the Pakistani state and core interests. This is what Obama said last night:

Gradually, the Taliban has begun to control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating attacks of terrorism against the Pakistani people.

The United States has accused Pakistan of maintaining ties and offering support to groups such as the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani network, and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin -- which all play roles in the insurgency in Afghanistan. These groups are different from extremist groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which have been behind the increased violence targeting civilians and military installations alike inside of Pakistan.

In the murky world of northwest Pakistan, the dividing line between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban isn't always clear, but the main point is that one set of groups has received support from the Pakistani security establishment, and another set is at war with the Pakistani security establishment.

Understanding that distinction is important to answering tough questions such as whether a surge of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan could actually further undermine Pakistan's stability.

In the Congressional testimonies and any additional speeches President Obama may do -- and I think he needs to do a better job than he did last night -- this point about more clarity on the way forward in Pakistan needs greater attention.

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. 

By Brian Katulis

On Thursday, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan announced that it would relocate hundreds of foreign staff out of the country in response to an attack targeting a U.N. guest house in Kabul last week. U.N. spokesman Dan McNortan told reporters that out of a total of 1,100 expatriate workers, 600 will be temporarily relocated for security reasons.

The United Nations has a presence of about 5,600 personnel in Afghanistan, the vast majority of whom are Afghan nationals. Kai Eide, the Norwegian diplomat who heads the UN mission in Afghanistan said, "We will do what we can to avoid disruption of work."

What exactly does the United Nations do in Afghanistan? It conducts the sort of work that top U.S. and NATO commander in the country Gen. Stanley McChrystal and key U.S. policy leaders on Afghanistan have identified as essential to the effort of stabilizing the country -- carrying out reconstruction and relief efforts, and provides advice on internal political processes, among other things. (See more details on the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan here.)

The timing of this decision to pull out personnel comes at a sensitive juncture for the Obama administration, as it gropes for an updated strategy to replace the one it announced in March. And it comes at a time when the United States has started to implement a "civilian surge" aimed at getting more personnel to work some of the very same issues -- reconstruction, development, and building governance structures -- that the U.N. staff now set to leave the country were doing.

The 600 U.N. staffers who are being relocated is about the same number of people the Obama administration is set to send as part of the civilian surge in 2009. Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew late last month briefed reporters and told them that the Obama administration plans to have just under 1,000 civilians with the State Department and USAID in Afghanistan by the end of the year, up from 320 at the start, meaning that the civilian surge by the United States is about 600. So just from a numbers perspective, depending on where the U.N. staffers are relocated and for how long, the U.S. civilian surge to Afghanistan -- if it indeed goes through as planned -- may simply just cancel out the loss of U.N. workers being pulled out.

Now that's just an interesting note about the simple numbers game -- there are more complex dynamics involving specific tasks and projects. U.N. agencies have certain tasks that they conduct, and the United States and other countries engaged in Afghanistan on development and governance have their own efforts. There are some coordination mechanisms between these efforts, but many observers have noted that the coordination between the development and governance efforts in different parts of Afghanistan is weak.

Which raises a broader question -- what is the comprehensive strategy for making sure that all of the efforts planned by international agencies and individual countries on the development and governance fronts are coordinated? Since weak governance and corruption have been identified in both the strategy reviews and strategic communications of the Obama administration on Afghanistan, it makes sense that some sort of action plan -- coordinated among all of the countries and international organizations in Afghanistan -- should be developed to address these threats to Afghanistan's stability. But where is that plan?

As I mentioned in an article earlier this week, the draft metrics floating around Washington, DC earlier this fall shouldn't leave anyone optimistic about how well advanced the strategy for development and governance efforts in Afghanistan is, which is a major problem. In many ways, the simpler policy question is whether or not to send more troops -- the more difficult questions are those related to these other components of a possible integrated strategy in Afghanistan, because of a lack of resources and capacity in U.S. civilian agencies. Additionally, the simple fact of the matter is that governance and economic development have a direct impact on internal power dynamics in Afghanistan -- who we choose to partner with impacts the internal fights among Afghans for power, for better or worse.

Another issue is the question of leverage and how to best shape the calculations and actions of Afghan leaders to align with the interests of global security. The U.N. decision on Thursday seems mostly about security concerns, but Eide curiously sent an interesting "don't take us for granted" message to Afghan leaders: "There is a belief among some, that the international community (presence) will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan," Eide said. "I would like to emphasize that that's not true." Whether this "tough love" message matters remains to be seen.

But the overall point here is that if there is one positive thing about the messy election process in Afghanistan, it is that it has brought governance and anti-corruption more closely to the center of the policy debate on national security, which is quite amazing. The experts knew for years that these issues were problems, but now these problems have helped to some small degree reframe the national security debate on Afghanistan to something beyond just how many boots on the ground there are. Now the challenge for the Obama administration is to come up with concrete policy actions that can effectively deal with these problems of weak governance and corruption, and whether we have a coordinated international strategy to do so.

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Paula Bronstein /Getty Images

By Brian Katulis and Hardin Lang

As members of an international election observation delegation to last month's presidential election and provincial elections, we were impressed that the courage of millions Afghan voters who showed up at the polls despite widespread violence and intimidation. Holding an election in a time of war is never an easy thing, and many Afghans faced the tough choice of going to cast their ballots in a combat zone.

Although the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced this week that President Hamid Karzai passed the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff with more than 90 percent of the vote counted, the electoral process is far from complete. The country's IEC needs to finish tabulating the results, and the Electoral Complaints Commission, a separate body consisting of both Afghan and international commissioners, will need to credibly adjudicate mounting charges of electoral fraud, which now number in the thousands. For the next Afghan president to gain the legitimacy to govern, these bodies must complete their tasks transparently and efficiently. 

Holding an imperfect election was the easy part. Yet, no matter who emerges as the ballot's victor, the vote did not magically transform the country. Like Iraq's 2005 elections, the voting process in Afghanistan merely provided some indication of the internal balance of power between those who chose to participate, as well as those who did not, including affiliates of the Taliban. Unfortunately, that balance appears to increasingly favor the latter.

Perhaps more crucial to Afghanistan's immediate future, the next president will have to come to grips with the insurgency and the forces that drive it. America and its allies can help, but simply sending more troops will not win the day. Afghanistan's next leader must take two key steps to build a more stable foundation for any increased U.S. support to be effective.

First, Afghanistan's next leader need to find a way to either defeat, co-opt, or share power with those who violently oppose the government. As in Iraq, it will also be necessary to find common ground with some elements of the insurgency. Senior Afghan officials acknowledge that they have been talking to the Taliban for some time. But, like the Sunnis in Iraq in 2005, the Taliban shunned the polls. Other avenues must now be found to bring those willing to talk to the table.   

Second, Afghanistan's next president must get serious about improving governance, justice, and the rule of law. Improved security alone will not arrest the slide towards chaos. It must be accompanied by a real effort to help Afghan institutions deliver basic services to the population. Only tangible improvements in daily life will close the growing "confidence gap" between the Afghan state and its citizens.  

In the coming weeks, the Obama administration will face some decisions about its course in Afghanistan. And while the United States is trying to do its part, the strategy put forth has come up short. President Obama's team announced a "civilian surge" in March, but five months later it has filled only a third of the State Department positions it set for Afghanistan.

And even if the Obama administration does deliver on its "smart power" rhetoric -- more  development and better diplomacy -- it won't matter if Afghanistan's leaders fail to step up to plate. So, regardless of who wins, the Obama administration must make clear to the victor its expectation for real progress: The next government in Kabul must get serious about fighting both corruption and narco trafficking. And it must make a real effort to build state institutions.

To be sure the United States can no longer afford to foster a dangerous and dysfunctional culture of dependency among Afghanistan's leadership. President Hamid Karzai's pardoning of five senior drug traffickers last month did not advance stability. (Transparency International now ranks Afghanistan as the fifth most corrupt country in the world.) It should come as no surprise that more Afghans are turning to the Taliban for rough, but decisive, justice.

Many observers will expect requests for additional U.S. troops for Afghanistan later this year. But it would be foolish for the United States to send more troops and continue spending billions more in Afghanistan without stronger commitments on governance and rule of law from the country's next president. The United States can help, but only if it has a serious partner in Afghanistan. 

Brian Katulis and Hardin Lang are senior fellows at the Center for American Progress and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, respectively. Both were election observers in Afghanistan last week as part of a U.S.-sponsored delegation organized by Democracy International.

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By Brian Katulis, Kabul, Afghanistan

In the 48-hour period after the polls closed here in Afghanistan, there has been a quick rush to judge on the elections here, long before the votes are tabulated and the process for dealing with complaints has even gotten underway. 

As a member of an international observer delegation organized by Democracy International, I've been asked questions that simply can't be answered at this point, because no one has enough information to know what actually transpired in Thursday's elections.  Different groups have a collection of anecdotes and observations from around the country.  But that's all they are -- anecdotes and qualitative observations.  Will that stop groups from holding press conferences this weekend or analysts from penning opinion editorials drawing grand conclusions for U.S. strategy as a result of the elections?  Don't bet on it -- the mad rush is spin the elections is already happening. 

No one can definitively answer some of the questions put to election observers by the media -- what was voter turnout, whether Afghanistan's presidential elections are heading to a second round, broader questions like whether the Afghan people will see these elections as legitimate or "free and fair," or what this means for the Obama administration's strategy to stabilize Afghanistan.  It is too early in the process.

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced on Friday that the presidential vote count was completed in all provinces, which means that the numbers from each of the polling sites around the country would be posted in those areas but not officially tabulated.  This is just the first step in the process - the full tally will take place over the weekend, and the IEC said that it plans to have preliminary results by Tuesday, August 25.  The results won't be finalized for weeks, until the Election Complaints Commission deals with at least hundreds and quite likely thousands of complaints that are likely to be filed in the coming weeks.

Yet there's been a quick push to frame the post-election debate coming from two main groups -- the competitors in the elections here and the United States government.  The two camps of the presumed frontrunners in the presidential race -- Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah -- did what every political group of any worth does in an election -- they claimed their candidate was in the lead early.  Like the "spin room" after a presidential debate in my own country, the candidates or their surrogates have been fast out of the gate to frame the post-election debate. 

That's understandable, and the longer it takes the IEC to announce even preliminary results, the more we're likely to see additional claims and counterclaims.  Afghanistan's tension-filled and uncertain political environment -- leaders have hinted at taking their supporters to the streets if there are questions about the results -- means that the IEC should release its results as quickly as possible to cut off the spin and conspiracies that are starting to grow.

The United States government has also been quick to frame how these elections are interpreted. U.S. President Barack Obama was quick to offer his judgment, saying on Election Day that, "We had what appears to be a successful election in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban's efforts to disrupt it."  The day after the elections, Obama made another statement concluding that the elections were an "important step forward in the Afghan people's effort to take control of their future, even as the violent extremists stand in their way." 

Both statements were aimed at putting the best face on an election that appears to have had mixed results at best -- that Obama did this is understandable given that the American public appears to be increasingly skeptical about additional investments in Afghanistan.  President Obama needs to do a better job at convincing the American public that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," and an election that leaves the country's political leaders divided wouldn't boost Americans' confidence. 

The danger President Obama faces is that an election that he called the "most important event of the year" in Afghanistan and now has quickly judged as a step forward might not be viewed by Afghan political actors and the public in the same light, and the U.S. government might find itself in an awkward position in the coming weeks trying to adjust its position on these elections.

Various observer delegations are still trying to understand what they actually know at this early stage of the process.  I participated in a debriefing with many of the observers that were part of the Democracy International team, and I've been calling colleagues who were placed in various areas of the country to try to get a sense of what we saw collectively as a group.  Democracy International has a core team processing reports from all around the country and coordinating with other groups, particularly Afghan election monitors, in an effort to collect as much information as possible. 

At this early stage, there are some safe preliminary conclusions one can make about the 2009 presidential and provincial elections in Afghanistan.  First, it is clear that a significant number of Afghan voters were disenfranchised by the violence and intimidation. Organizing an election in a time of war presents serious challenges.  Some of our observers were actually holed up because of the fighting, and Afghan voters faced the difficult choice of going to the polls in a combat zone, if the polls were open in their area. 

How many were disenfranchised, we won't know until more data is available, but it looks like the turnout was considerably lower than the 2004 and 2005 elections. Some might argue that it wasn't just violence and intimidation, but also voter apathy about the candidates that has contributed to lower turnout. That's an empirical question that could be answered by survey research, assuming one can conduct accurate survey research with the security challenges and cultural constraints that Afghanistan has. 

Second, it appears that there were several instances of voter irregularities and fraud in certain parts of the country, particularly with voter identification cards and the voter registry. Whether these irregularities amount to the type of problems that could tip the balance in the presidential election is anyone's guess right now, and that's just a guess.  (The provincial elections are another matter, since the number of votes required to win is much smaller, and worth more attention in a separate analysis.) 

If voter turnout is low -- say something like 5 million voters out of 15 million registered, then it would take 50,000 fraudulent votes to move the presidential election results by 1 percent. That's a lot of fraud, and it's quite likely that any fraud of that magnitude would be detected by election commission officials, observers, and the media. It's not impossible to move the results in that fashion, but it would require a degree of coordination and effort that might be difficult to execute in a country with considerable infrastructure and security challenges.

But we won't really know much more until the data comes in from the Independent Election Commission and it is measured up against the information collected by election monitors and observers, who are still trying to put all of their pieces together. In the meantime, we'll all engage in sharing our anecdotes, which may be interesting but won't really tell us anything about the quality of the election process.  Eric Bjornlund of Democracy International, the man who literally wrote the book on international election observation noted today, the election process is ongoing and it will take some time before we can judge what really happened.

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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