John Nichols: Afghanistan Election Fraud and the High Price of Empire
[John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.]
It is amusing, if remarkable, that there are still some players in Washington who try to maintain the fantasy that Afghan President Hamid Karzai governs with anything akin to legitimacy.
Karzai, an alleged oil industry fixer awarded control of his country by occupying powers, has always served with strings attached.
And the Afghan people have been quite aware of that fact.
It is true that, at different points over the past eight years, Karzai has enjoyed measures of popular support, thanks to alliances with warlords and drug dealers, the inflaming of ethnic rivalries and an awareness that he was the one distributing all those billions of dollars from the United States.
But, aside from a slick sense of dress, Karzai has never had much going for him in the political department.
So he has, out of instinct and by necessity, relied on fraud to "win" the elections that have kept the Afghan president and his minions in power.
That was not much of a problem during the Bush-Cheney years. The men who assumed control of the United States after losing the 2000 popular vote by more than 500,000 and then shutting down the recount of votes in the contested state of Florida were not going to gripe about the mangling of democratic processes in distant Afghanistan.
But the fantasy is getting harder to maintain now that Bush has retired and Cheney has repositioned himself as the planet's primary defender of torture...
... This is not a new problem.
Colonial powers have faced these challenges throughout history.
It is one of the wages of empire.
And's that's the problem with the US presence in Afghanistan.
While it may have been initiated with a practical purpose -- to hunt down the plotters of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to rid the country of its terrorist-friendly Taliban leaders -- and while it may have been reimagined as an experiment in the sort of "nation building" that presidential candidate George Bush once decried, this imperial endeavor has ended up as imperial endeavors invariably do...
... Hayden reminds us that: "August was the cruelest month for American forces in Afghanistan, with at least 49 killed, not including possible last-minute reports. The August numbers exceeded the previous high of 43 in July, as a result of the new escalation of fighting approved by President Obama. The President is expected to approve another troop increase shortly, which will inevitably increase American casualty rates in the 18-24 months of "hard fighting" forecast by the Pentagon. At a rate of 45 American deaths per month, the toll on Obama's watch would be 1,080 additional American deaths through 2011, as the President heads into a re-election."
Those are unsettling numbers, as are the numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They call for a renewal of antiwar activism. To make it happen, link up with Progressive Democrats of America, Peace Action and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, all three of which have taken the lead in arguing that those who really care about Afghanistan and America must work to get the United States out of the business of occupying distant lands and propping up puppet presidents.
Read entire article at OpEdNews.com
It is amusing, if remarkable, that there are still some players in Washington who try to maintain the fantasy that Afghan President Hamid Karzai governs with anything akin to legitimacy.
Karzai, an alleged oil industry fixer awarded control of his country by occupying powers, has always served with strings attached.
And the Afghan people have been quite aware of that fact.
It is true that, at different points over the past eight years, Karzai has enjoyed measures of popular support, thanks to alliances with warlords and drug dealers, the inflaming of ethnic rivalries and an awareness that he was the one distributing all those billions of dollars from the United States.
But, aside from a slick sense of dress, Karzai has never had much going for him in the political department.
So he has, out of instinct and by necessity, relied on fraud to "win" the elections that have kept the Afghan president and his minions in power.
That was not much of a problem during the Bush-Cheney years. The men who assumed control of the United States after losing the 2000 popular vote by more than 500,000 and then shutting down the recount of votes in the contested state of Florida were not going to gripe about the mangling of democratic processes in distant Afghanistan.
But the fantasy is getting harder to maintain now that Bush has retired and Cheney has repositioned himself as the planet's primary defender of torture...
... This is not a new problem.
Colonial powers have faced these challenges throughout history.
It is one of the wages of empire.
And's that's the problem with the US presence in Afghanistan.
While it may have been initiated with a practical purpose -- to hunt down the plotters of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to rid the country of its terrorist-friendly Taliban leaders -- and while it may have been reimagined as an experiment in the sort of "nation building" that presidential candidate George Bush once decried, this imperial endeavor has ended up as imperial endeavors invariably do...
... Hayden reminds us that: "August was the cruelest month for American forces in Afghanistan, with at least 49 killed, not including possible last-minute reports. The August numbers exceeded the previous high of 43 in July, as a result of the new escalation of fighting approved by President Obama. The President is expected to approve another troop increase shortly, which will inevitably increase American casualty rates in the 18-24 months of "hard fighting" forecast by the Pentagon. At a rate of 45 American deaths per month, the toll on Obama's watch would be 1,080 additional American deaths through 2011, as the President heads into a re-election."
Those are unsettling numbers, as are the numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They call for a renewal of antiwar activism. To make it happen, link up with Progressive Democrats of America, Peace Action and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, all three of which have taken the lead in arguing that those who really care about Afghanistan and America must work to get the United States out of the business of occupying distant lands and propping up puppet presidents.