Hamid Karzai will continue to imperil Afghanistan for seven more years of corrupt rule. He must have rigged the election outright. Afghans like Karzai would do anything for everything they want.
Posted on 09/08/2009 7:08:11 PM PDT by myknowledge
Mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing in the recent elections has thrown international commitment to Afghanistan into peril, says guest columnist Ahmed Rashid.
Claims of mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing during the 20 August presidential elections has plunged Afghanistan into a deep political and constitutional crisis for which neither the Afghan leadership nor the Americans or the UN have any easy answer.
The rigging was assured months ago when President Hamid Karzai began to ally himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their jobs and their lucrative sinecures, if President Karzai lost.
The reports coming in from around the country but especially from the Pashtun south - the heartland that voted for Mr Karzai overwhelmingly in 2004 - are becoming more indisputable every day.
Supporters of both Mr Karzai and leading contenders like Dr Abdullah are all alleged to have carried out ballot-box stuffing after voting ended on 20 August.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Hamid Karzai will continue to imperil Afghanistan for seven more years of corrupt rule. He must have rigged the election outright. Afghans like Karzai would do anything for everything they want.
Unless we carpet bomb this rock infested sandlot, we will lose. OR, get the hell out and let the sandflies control their worthless land.
You got that right.
Afghanistan is and will always be the Wild West.
It is an arid desert with no resources other than the poppies that fuel the opium trade.
Civilized people have no use for Afghanistan, and that is why it will never be civilized.
It is the exclusive domain of terrorists and warlords.
The US experiment of nation building there has failed, as it was always destined to in a land of outlaws and bandits.
What we need to do is what we always should have done: get out, and scorch the earth as we go.
We should burn the poppy fields and destroy the camps and what little infrastructure is there. Instead of building roads and schools, we should be breaking them.
We need to make travel and communication to and from Afghanistan as difficult as possible. And we will have to come back once every decade and do it all over again. But next time, we should follow the Clinton doctrine, and do it from 10,000 feet.
You picked two options that won’t work.
My relatives who are in the Marines in Afghanistan
wouldn’t agree with you.
May I ask why?
I didn't know that ACORN & SEIU had organized local chapters in Afghanistan. Must be part of 0bozo outreach to his muzzlims brothers jihadists.
Not until we get rid of radical Islam. The job is going to be harder with a supporter in the White House.
You picked two options that won’t work.
My relatives who are in the Marines in Afghanistan
wouldn’t agree with you.
__________________
God bless them and we thank them.
However, if we are not in to win, those who sacrifice, lose.
I am afraid that it is now time for those who serve, to question.
We are increasingly living under a Marxist and his motives are definately suspect.
I’ve been there and done that.
I repeat: Thank your honorable loved ones/service members.
They are brothers to all those who have served.
corrected for you:
The job is going to be harder with a islamic radical in the White House
Mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing in the recent elections has thrown international commitment to Afghanistan into peril...... how's the author on the status of the phony elections in Iran and Venezuela?
This is a different enemy, a different war, a different time, a different culture a left wing 7/24 news media.
What was done 40 years ago doesn’t work now.
Living in San Diego with the largest concentration of military, many here have a better knowledge what is going on.
Two of my friends, a ret. Marine Major and a ret. Navy Capt. and SEAL , both Conservative Republicans say
exactly what I am saying.
We have to be sure that however we help the Afghans get out of any election squabbles, it is done by helping them get consensus on solutions and not by simply using our might and influence to knock down the Karzai administration to put some placeholder in office. Doing so will only pretend that we can select a consensus placeholder ourselves, which will never be true to the many legitimate factions. Forcing such a placeholder on the situation will only undermine the legitimacy of that individual and undermine us even further.
As in South Korea over the decades, our role is not to defend or oppose a particular Afghan government, but to defend political processes whereby the Afghan people can work to support or change their governments BY THEIR PEACEFUL EFFORTS.
I agree with most of what you say but not the poppy field issue. As much as we would like them to emerge from desolation and build a country, I am afraid it isn’t possible to pull people up to a level we would like.
Perhaps that is the #1 lesson coming out of the Bush era: we cannot nation-build. We can, and should, hunt down terrorists using the most sophisticated means possible. It is culture that we are fighting and I never realized how hard that was to change.
I think we had few options coming out of 9/11 and I supported both wars. That said, I think we are witnessing the end of an era of conventional warfare and our views on the world.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to stop working with populations that hate our guts and maybe always will. Let them revert and do their damndest to survive. No more Pakistani rugs, for example.
We will need to do a regime change here, first, but isolating some of this vermin may be our best option and it tears my guts out to even say that.
That’s why I’m so mad. We won’t give up. Ask them: Semper Fi?
So you think we should leave the poopy fields standing?
Why?
We must do what’s best for America.
Sorry, that should be “poppy fields”.
However, from what I hear about Afghan hygiene, the other may not be so far off...
Drugs are not our major issue and wiping out the economy there doesn’t seem valuable. You blow the fields and they will be replanted in a week. All you do is piss of a bunch of farmers and gain nothing.
I am ready to call it off in Afghanistan and cut our losses. Then isolate the crap out of the region, mainly Pakistan and Iran.
Future weapons are probably our best bet there. We have to transition to the new warfare model.
I’m cognizant of the fact that I am a keyboard warrior. That said, I am also a computer person and warfare is moving in that direction. When people cannot escape the enemy, warfare will change dramatically and we are on the cusp of that technology.
We have a very weak President in serious domestic trouble so external affairs are secondary. That may cost us but it is reality.
“We must do what’s best for America.”
That’s what I said, in my opinion.
Others are free to think some other set of policy choices are “what’s best for America”. That’s THEIR right.
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