Our Man in Kabul

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from David Wood at Politics Daily: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/02/our-man-in-kabul/


ON a nearly deserted road in eastern Afghanistan this autumn, I had a brief conversation with an old farmer driving a battered truck perilously overloaded with sacks of onions and melons. He had chuckled when I asked him if he was going to vote in the presidential elections. He touched the soiled turban on his head and squinted through his dirty windshield toward the distant market towns that the Taliban dominate. "There is no point in voting,'' he said. "Karzai will win anyway. You know that. He is your man.''

He is our man indeed. And Hamid Karzai's casual assumption this morning of another five-year term as Afghanistan's president, after the election runoff was canceled when his only opponent pulled out of the race, saddles the Obama administration with a king-size migraine.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has rested on a central goal: building public trust in a strong, democratic central government. Sixty-eight thousand American troops are deployed there in service of that goal. The election process, beginning with a nationwide vote in August, was seen as crucial in demonstrating that democracy works and is worth the hard work and risk-taking required to support it.

Today that idea is a shambles. Now the U.S. strategy rests on an undemocratic, corrupt and weak central government, a president who cheated his way into office in an election held under American supervision, an election that even the government of Afghanistan concedes was stolen. The script couldn't have been improved if Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar had put himself to the task.

Can this get any worse?

read more: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/02/our-man-in-kabul/

[tekisui]

1. Can this get any worse?

You can bet your ass it can and it will get worse. Obama will be announcing thousands of more troops to be added in a few weeks. The Predator Drone program will expand and escalate. We will get more bogged down in a country that hates us for being there.

[undeterred]

2. Our UNOCAL man in Kabul

Remember what its all about.

[denem]

3. Karzai is the Pashtun representative. He would win anyway.

42% of the population is Pashtun. Both his father and grandfather were courtiers close to the Afghan King Zahir Shah.

Afghanistan has no history of democracy. The ruler from the Pashtun majority is traditionally chosen/crowned at a A Loya Jirga, a grand assembly of Chieftains/Warlords.

The whole enterprise of attempting to impose elections on diverse, fiercely territorial tribes, was a farce from the beginning.