The Washington Post has a positive-thinking headline today: “Afghanistan’s new president: ‘Hold me accountable.'”
A more honest headline would have been: “Afghan Election Thief says ‘Hold Me Accountable’ – the latest Obama democracy sham success story”
Ashraf Ghani took the oath of office after the U.S. government helped finagle a power-sharing deal between Ghani and allegedly second place finish Abdullah Abdullah. Abdullah got far more votes than Ghani in the initial round of voting — but a miraculous surge of votes in the second round supposedly gave Ghani the lead. The U.S. government has not yet revealed how much in payoffs and promises it spent to get the two politicians to appear to cut a deal.
Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, also perennially promised to be accountable. For instance, in December 2004, Newsweek interviewed Karzai and headlined his promise to deliver an “honest, accountable, and austere government.”
Karzai’s promises did not deter him from massively looting U.S. aid and stealing the 2009 presidential election.
The Obama administration is pretending that the Afghans had an election that was clean enough to produce an untainted new regime. But TOLO News reported earlier this month that Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) had invalidated all votes at more than a thousand polling sites:
“IEC acknowledged the fact that the June 14 run-off elections witnessed massive frauds. “There was wide-scale fraud by security forces, governors and IEC employees,” a commissioner for the IEC, Azizullah Bakhtyari, admitted. “Clearly, most of the fraud happened in coordination with IEC employees.” Bakhtyari hopes that the audit process will re-establish people’s trust in the election process. “The audit helped us recognize the employees responsible for the fraud that took place at the 1,028 polling sites,” he said. “Clearly, we will take action against them for harming the public’s trust in the electoral institution.”
The U.S. State Department issued a statement last week that required hip boots even to read: “There were serious allegations of extensive fraud during the election, resulting in an unprecedented 100% audit of all ballots. We join the candidates in deploring any fraud in the electoral process, especially any that was committed by those in the electoral institutions who were most responsible for protecting Afghans’ democratic aspirations…Nonetheless, the final outcome of the election process is legitimate and the results will be transparent.”
The election results are still not transparent and the only reason the Obama administration considers the new government “legitimate” is because it cut a deal to permit extended stays for 10,000 U.S. troops.
The State Department also praised Karzai for his role in “the first democratic and peaceful transfer of leadership in Afghanistan’s history.” The congratulatory declaration omitted to mention that the first such transition should have occurred in 2009 except for Karzai’s brazen fabrication of votes.
When Ghani and Abdullah announced a U.S. brokered/subsidized power-sharing deal, Secretary of State John Kerry whooped: “These two men have put the people of Afghanistan first, and they’ve ensured that the first peaceful democratic transition in the history of their country begins with national unity.”
It is only a matter of time until Ghani’s and Abdullah’s supporters fall upon each other with knives or worse. But as long as Obama and Kerry can pretend to be spreading democracy, it doesn’t matter how many more American soldiers pointlessly die.
On Twitter @jimbovard and www.jimbovard.com
“Leave them to their sectarian religious wars. They’ve been killing each other for thousands of years, and it will continue unabated no matter what we enlightened, secular westerners do. Best not to get mixed up in it.”