This shows the experiments in nation building necessitated by George W. Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and his unprovoked invasion of Iraq have been resounding failures according to the 2013 rankings by Transparency International. Afghanistan was tied with North Korea and Somalia for the most corrupt state in the world. Before the rise of the Islamic State in parts of Iraq, that US molded government ranked in the bottom six most corrupt states, even ranking below Assad's Syria.
CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2013
The Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 serves as a reminder that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world.
The Index scores 177 countries and territories on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). No country has a perfect score, and two-thirds of countries score below 50. This indicates a serious, worldwide corruption problem. Hover on the MAP above to see how your country fares.
The world urgently needs a renewed effort to crack down on money laundering, clean up political finance, pursue the return of stolen assets and build more transparent public institutions.
The Afghan Government's corruption is the Taliban's best recruiting tool besides making the Afghan government so dysfunctional that ten years of the US propping it up with military force and pouring in a mountain of American money we still haven't been able to transform it.
There's little doubt that the Iraqi government's utter corruption along with refusing to share power with minority Sunnis helped to fuel the lightning rise of Iraq's Islamic State.
"But I'm serious about this business about America retreating. And I've got great faith in the transformative power of liberty, and that's what I believe is going to happen in the Middle East. And I understand it undermines the argument of the stability-ites -- people who say, you just got to worry about stability." ~ George W. Bush March 14, 2008