"We have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it's not America's responsibility to make it one," said President Barack Obama last May.

No, it isn't, and Afghanistan is a strikingly imperfect society in almost every respect: politics, economy, security and human rights. But it isn't entirely a lost cause, either.

President Hamid Karzai, who was given the job of running Afghanistan after the United States invaded in 2001 and who subsequently won two deeply suspect elections in 2004 and 2009, finally left office on Sept. 22, although he didn't move very far. (His newly built private home backs onto the presidential palace.) On the way out, he took one last opportunity to bite the hand that fed him for so long.