Why Would Election Fraud in Afghanistan Make People Think the Government Is Illegitimate?

[bigtree]

. . . my thoughts exactly when I read White House Secretary Gibbs' comments praising the outcome of the Afghan 'election'.

from Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent: http://washingtonindependent.com/66115/why-would-election-fraud-in-afghanistan-make-people-think-the-government-is-illegitimate


More from today’s funtime White House presser. Jake Tapper of ABC asked Robert Gibbs about the Afghanistan election:

TAPPER: President Obama last month in Pittsburgh said, of the Afghan elections and the aftermath, “What’s most important is that there’s a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for their government.” Is there a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for the Karzai government?

GIBBS: Well, I have no reason to believe there’s not.

Gibbs’ answer actually gets worse from there! (here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/11/todays-qs-for-os-wh-1122009.html)

To be clear: there’s a good meta-point here, but it’s slathered underneath this nonsense. Americans should not substitute our judgments about the election for Afghan judgments. It’s the Afghans’ perspective that matters when it comes to the crucial question of governmental legitimacy, not ours. But at the same time, Gibbs has every reason to believe there isn’t a sense of legitimacy about Karzai among the Afghan people, because a full third of his votes were thrown out due to fraud concerns. Hundreds of thousands of ballots!

It will help to have a credible poll taken in the coming weeks to determine what Afghans think about Karzai’s legitimacy. That will actually determine the issue. But please — let’s not act like we’re without common sense.

read: http://washingtonindependent.com/66115/why-would-election-fraud-in-afghanistan-make-people-think-the-government-is-illegitimate

[Truth2Tell]

1. I love the smell of American hypocrisy

in the morning.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The same reason people refuse to accept me as God after I won the election in a landslide.

The vote, after eliminating unqualified voters, was 1-0.

[bigtree]

4. what a dilemma for the leading challenger

. . . whether to stay in and legitimize the fraud, our stand back and let Karzai and the U.S. work to sell the sham as legitimate and hope the truth outs. He expressed anguish and frustration today with his choice, but I think he made the right choice. The questions now are: who on the ground is buying what Karzai and the WH are selling and what effect the opposition will have in protest.

[damntexdem]

3. Well, after all, it happened to Dubya.

But, fine, let's not impose our judgments -- let's just take our troops and our money and leave.

[bigtree]

5. or continue to lie

. . . about 'democracy' in Afghanistan (best government money could buy) and continue building their Potemkin government which Afghans are supposedly willing to fold under (except for those pesky insurgents).

[GodlessBiker]

6. I think when deciding whether we should act, our judgment matters.

We cannot and should not defer to the judgment of another country or the people of another country when it comes to deciding whether it is in our best interests to act or whether an act we might take is the right thing to do. We should make our own judgment as to the legitimacy of that government and go from there.

As far as how the Afghan people should act with regard to their government, then their judgment as to the legitimacy of their government matters.

[bigtree]

7. the legitimacy of the Afghan government among Afghans

. . . should be an important element in the decision by the president to escalate or continue the occupation. So should the actual fact of whether or not is is actually legitimate. It looks like there's been a self-serving snap judgment on that point from the administration.

[Flaneur]

8. Imagine that Hugo Chavez had done what Karzai did.

And the transparency of American hypocrisy becomes blindingly apparent.

Not to mention the empty rhetoric about democracy.

Democracy and human rights only matter when we can use them as a club against our enemies.

[bigtree]

9. or Iran

. . . oh, wait . . .

[bigtree]

10. .

[tekisui]

11. Up is down, escalation is reduction, theft is democracy,

war is peace.

[bigtree]

12. Hamid Karzai Is a ‘Gangster’

from Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent: http://washingtonindependent.com/66228/hamid-karzai-is-a-gangster


11/3/09

Michael Cohen, with something between bewilderment and respect, calls Hamid Karzai a gangster. He means it in the slang sense of someone who doesn’t care what you think of him; will do dirt right in front of your eyes; and dare you to do something about it. And reading this New York Times piece about Karzai’s first post-election speech, it’s really hard to disagree.

“Afghanistan has been tarnished by administrative corruption and I will launch a campaign to clean the government of corruption,” he said.

Asked if that might involve changing key ministers and officials, he said, “These problems cannot be solved by changing high-ranking officials. We’ll review the laws and see what problems are in the law and we will draft some new laws.”

He added that he would try to strengthen an anti-corruption commission that was set up last year.

That’s gangster. Look, this is a guy who stole an election and got away with it; whose brother gets money from the CIA; and who’s probably going to see a coincidental U.S. troop escalation as an effective reward. As Michael writes, he’s gonna get right on that corruption problem, yessir. To that U.S. official who said it’ll take another Friedman Unit to figure out Karzai’s intentions: what exactly is unclear right now?

[unhappycamper]

13. And his brother is a dope dealer who's on the CIA payroll. n/t