Washington praises Afghan election fiasco to justify war escalation

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Washington praises Afghan election fiasco to justify war escalation
22 August 2009

President Barack Obama spoke to reporters on the White House lawn
Friday, declaring that the August 20 presidential election in
US-occupied Afghanistan was “an important step forward in the Afghan
people’s effort to take control of their future.”

On Thursday, in a radio interview, he praised what he termed “a
successful election in Afghanistan despite the Taliban’s effort to
disrupt it,” while vowing that his administration would stay “focused
on finishing the job in Afghanistan.”

Whether Obama knew it or not, his remarks echoed those delivered by
one of his predecessors, who heaped similar praise on a vote that had
taken place in a country thousands of miles away, while promising that
US troops there would soon “finish the job.”

The year was 1967, the president was Lyndon B. Johnson and the
election was in Vietnam. Johnson described the Vietnamese going to the
polls as evidence of “dramatic progress” and invoked it as a
legitimization of the steady escalation of the US war—now supposedly
in defense of an “elected government.” Within months, the Vietnamese
liberation movement launched the Tet Offensive and Johnson was forced
to foreswear a second term.

Clearly, there are major differences between Vietnam 42 years ago and
Afghanistan today. There are, however, also striking similarities in
the nature of the two elections and the way in which they have been
manipulated to provide a democratic façade for colonial-style wars of
aggression.

Both elections were carried out under the guns of US-led occupation
forces. In both countries, any candidate opposing the US military
presence in the country was prevented from running. And in both cases,
the leading candidates were a collection of corrupt puppets who
carried out wholesale ballot stuffing and electoral fraud.

The response of the US media, and particularly the editorial boards of
the two most influential papers in the country, has been far more
slavish in response to the Afghan elections than they were four
decades ago in Vietnam.

The New York Times Friday lauded the corrupt charade in Afghanistan:
“Millions of Afghans, determined to shape their own future, defied
Taliban threats and voted Thursday...”

The editorial neglects to mention that millions more—apparently the
majority of the electorate—abstained from the entire process. That
those who voted did so out of a determination to “shape their own
future” is hardly self-evident. In many cases, particularly in the
rural areas containing nearly three-quarters of the population, voters
were coerced by local warlords or cast their ballots strictly along
ethnic lines.

A more accurate assessment of the electoral exercise in Afghanistan
was put succinctly by one of the opposition candidates, former
planning minister Ramazan Bashardost: “This is not an election. This
is a comedy.”

The Times editorial quickly gets to the main purpose of the election:
“President Obama has rightfully defined success in Afghanistan as
essential to America’s struggle against Al Qaeda. He has backed that
up with more troops—60,000 now with 6,000 on the way...” The paper
goes on to commend the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley
McChrystal for being “candid about how badly the war is going—and how
hard and costly it is likely to be even to start turning things around.”

The meaning of this is clear. The voice of establishment liberalism is
fully behind the war in Afghanistan and is pushing for it to be
escalated. The war is likely to be even more “hard and costly” as
McChrystal is preparing to request even more US troops—another 20,000
to 60,000 according to military sources—and many billions of dollars
more in funding to double the size of the Afghan puppet forces.

The Times urges on the US military campaign, demanding that American
soldiers “dislodge Taliban guerrillas from the strategic mountain
passes and towns they have retaken in recent years (without recklessly
placing local residents in the line of fire).” This parenthetical
appeal for a “humane” counterinsurgency campaign is merely an attempt
to assuage the consciences of more gullible readers. The escalation of
the US intervention is already resulting in a steady increase in the
slaughter of innocent men, women and children, the inevitable outcome
of fighting insurgents defending their own homeland against foreign
occupation.

The editorial goes on to upbraid the probable winner of the
election—either incumbent President Hamid Karzai or his principal
opponent, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom
claimed victory. They have “presided over a government whose
systematic corruption has consumed its credibility and the country’s
limited financial resources.” The Times cites the puppet regime’s
dependence on warlords for support, as well as the flourishing of
opium cultivation and drug trafficking under the protection of
government officials and, reportedly, Karzai’s own brother.

It demands that the government emerging from the election “turn these
disastrous trends around,” but then adds, understandingly, that “not
all unsavory alliances with warlords can be liquidated immediately” as
the country would become “ungovernable.”

Pointing to similar “disastrous trends” as well as the evidence that
the results of the election would be determined not by the voters but
by corrupt deals with warlords and massive fraud, the Washington Post
declared Wednesday: “For all that, the Afghan election represents
another advance for a nation whose progress must necessarily be
measured in small increments.”

The Post editorial also moves swiftly to the bottom line: “Success
will require considerable time and patience—and, almost certainly,
more troops and other resources than the Obama administration has yet
committed to.”

What emerges from these responses to the fraudulent election in
Afghanistan is a consensus within the American ruling establishment
behind the escalation of the US war in Afghanistan. The claim that
this war, soon to enter its ninth year, is aimed at defeating Al Qaeda
or protecting the US from terrorism is a patent lie. The original
pretense that the intervention was aimed at hunting down Osama bin
Laden was long ago abandoned, with the former arch terrorist (and CIA
asset) becoming a non-entity in the affairs of official Washington.

Tens of thousands of US and NATO troops are in Afghanistan as part of
a drive by US imperialism to secure hegemony in Central Asia, a
geo-strategically vital region that contains much of the world’s
energy reserves. While reproducing the vicious methods of colonial
counterinsurgency campaigns, the broader aim of the war is to use
America’s military might to offset its relative decline relative to
its principal rivals in Europe and Asia.

The plans to escalate this war will soon be announced under conditions
in which multiple polls show that the majority of the American people
oppose what Obama and the Democrats have tried to sell as the “good
war” or “war of necessity,” and by a two-to-one margin are against
sending still more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama may also find himself following in the footsteps of LBJ in
confronting mass opposition to war. However, under conditions of the
most profound crisis of US and world capitalism since the Great
Depression, this opposition will emerge most powerfully in the working
class and will inevitably become fused with the eruption of class
struggle against the profit system, the source of militarism.

Bill Van Auken

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/pers-a22.shtml

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