THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Maybe not enough yet to avoid a run off, but someone who will lick some boots and "ask" us to stay so more US soldiers can get shot up for no good reason.

Abdullah Abdullah, a longtime opponent of President Hamid Karzai and an ardent supporter of the United States, emerged Saturday as the clear front-runner in Afghanistan’s presidential election and could become the first non-Pashtun to lead the country in more than three centuries.

In preliminary results released Saturday, Mr. Abdullah, an ethnic Tajik from the north, won 45 percent of the vote, not enough to avoid a runoff with the leading Pashtun candidate, Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist and Karzai adviser, who won 32 percent. But Afghan government officials say Mr. Abdullah is on the verge of forging alliances with at least two of the Pashtun runners-up to gain their support, and possibly the presidency, in the next round.

Either of the top two candidates would represent a significant break with the years of deteriorating relations the United States has had with Afghanistan under Mr. Karzai, and a shift toward greater bilateral cooperation. Each candidate has said, for instance, that he would sign a security agreement with the United States allowing American forces to remain in the country past 2014, which Mr. Karzai negotiated but refused to sign.

But the apparent advantage for Mr. Abdullah, with his long record of advocating closer relations with the United States and a more militant stance against the Taliban, was likely to be encouraging news for the United States and its NATO allies, although they have been careful to refrain from expressing support for any candidate in the race.

We started with Karzai of the Afghans as our man in Kabul until he got tired of counting all the money we gave him. Now we will probably get the guy who was named twice. How long before he gets tired of us?