US accepts Hamid Karzai as Afghan leader despite poll fraud claims

[IndianaGreen]

This is just like admitting that the USS Maddox was never attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. How many people died on account of that lie? How many will die on account of this support for the Mayor of Kabul?

It is not fair to ask our troops to die and suffer to keep a narco-trafficking regime in power in Afghanistan.

Karzai stole the election. The evidence of massive fraud is incontrovertible. Our recognition of the illegitimate Karzai regime tells us two things: US will continue to escalate the war, and our fortunes will be tied to the unpopular Mayor of Kabul.

BTW, despite what the news story says, Afghanistan is not Iraq. What worked to some extent, and only temporarily, in Iraq won't work in Afghanistan.

US accepts Hamid Karzai as Afghan leader despite poll fraud claims

September 29, 2009

The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent.

Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it.

The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt.

The acceptance was conveyed by Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, in a meeting with her Afghan counterpart hours before Mr Obama received a formal request from General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, for up to 40,000 more troops.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6853123.ece

[Oregone]

1. LOL. Good thing they don't have Twitter there!

[IndianaGreen]

2. Compare Karzai's corruption with the corruption-free governance of Taliban

We have to look at this conflict from the Afghan point of view:

Op-Ed Contributor

Afghanistan’s Other Front

By JOSEPH KEARNS GOODWIN
Published: September 15, 2009
Concord, Mass.

ALLEGATIONS of ballot-stuffing in the presidential election in Afghanistan last month are now so widespread that a recount is necessary, and perhaps even a runoff. Yet this electoral chicanery pales in comparison to the systemic, day-to-day corruption within the administration of President Hamid Karzai, who has claimed victory in the election. Without a concerted campaign to fight this pervasive venality, all our efforts there, including the sending of additional troops, will be in vain.

I have just returned from Afghanistan, where I spent seven months as a special adviser to NATO’s director of communications. On listening tours across the country, we left behind the official procession of armored S.U.V.’s, bristling guns and imposing flak jackets that too often encumber coalition forces when they arrive in local villages. Dressed in civilian clothes and driven in ordinary cars, we were able to move around in a manner less likely to intimidate and more likely to elicit candor.

The recurring complaint I heard from Afghans centered on the untenable encroachment of government corruption into their daily lives — the homeowner who has to pay a bribe to get connected to the sewage system, the defendant who tenders payment to a judge for a favorable verdict. People were so incensed with the current government’s misdeeds that I often heard the disturbing refrain: “If Karzai is re-elected, then I am going to join the Taliban.”

If there is any entity more reviled in Afghanistan than the Karzai government and coalition forces, it is the Taliban, so I never took these desperate exclamations to be literally true. But these outbursts reveal a disgust with the current government so pronounced it cannot be dismissed. And the international community’s reluctance to fight corruption head-on has inextricably linked it with the despised administration. As we continue to give unequivocal support to a crooked government, our credibility is greatly diminished and the difficulty of our mission greatly increased.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16goodwin.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

[Crosseyed Jesus]

3. Modus Operandi

They accepted the Commander & Chimp as pResident without a fuss, twice, fraud included. So whats the big deal?