U.S. Backs Karzai Win - With Reservations

Afghan President Re-Elected by Default after Rival Drops Out; Will His Next Five Years in Power Resemble the Last Five?

(CBS)  In Afghanistan, two months of political turmoil ground to a messy halt today. The country's election commission declared President Hamid Karzai re-elected - a winner by default, after his runoff opponent dropped out.

President Obama quickly endorsed the decision - but with serious reservations, as CBS News correspondent David Martin reports.

President Obama's phone call to Hamid Karzai was unavoidable. Like him or not, he is the partner the U.S. will have to deal with.

Special Report: Afghanistan

"I emphasized that this has to be a point in time to which we write a new chapter based on improved governance," Mr. Obama told reporters following the phone call.

In other words: root out corruption and serve the people.

"He assured me that he understood the importance of this moment, but as I indicated to him the proof is not going to be in words," Mr. Obama said. "It's going to be in deeds."

U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying to support a government that has yet to prove worthy of the name.

So, if Karzai governs the next five years essentially as he has governed the last five years will the outcome be?

"I think the outcome is likely failure," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations. He said. That the first sign of how Karzai intends to govern will be the people he brings in.

"If what we're seeing are former war lords, power brokers in key provinces that he wants or needs politically that would be a very worrisome sign," Biddle said.

Still faced with the decision whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, President Obama is probably asking himself the same question CBS News correspondent Mandy Clark put to Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's lone remaining challenger who pulled out of the race over the weekend: Does Obama have a viable partner?

"I think I will leave it with the United States to judge because the United States has experience dealing with the same partner for the past few years," Abdullah said. "It is what it is."

If it doesn't change officials say, the Afghan people will cast the vote that really counts and side with the Taliban.

[wyodutch]

What's a little graft, rot and corruption between friends?
.
America never saw a pipsqueak despot it didn't like.

[jefleshman]

Story: Afghan President Re-Elected by Default after Rival Drops Out; Will His Next Five Years in Power Resemble the Last Five?

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Or you can write it as Pres Karzai's rival after arguing for a runnoff, quits!

Just another way of looking at it. Who would want a person who quits as their leader of the nation?

After the fraud votes were tossed on both sides:

Votes for Karzai: over 3,995,000
Votes for Abdullah: over 2,380,000
Votes for others: over 2,125,000

Yes people over 8.5 million everyday wonderful Afghans voted in the 20 Aug 2009 election.

I do not think the citizens of the US realize this. It is worth saying again, OVER 8.5 MILLION Afghans were willing to risk their lives for freedom! Would you do the same, knowing what may happen to you if you had purple ink on your finger?

Just my thoughts thank you for reading.

[stryker54]

Obama is backing this lunatic? Another 5 points for the Prez.

[incog-nito]

"I emphasized that this has to be a point in time to which we write a new chapter based on improved governance," Mr. Obama told reporters following the phone call.

Um... how exactly does supporting a puppet regime that committed massive fraud help improve governance, I wonder.

[Nikos_Retsos]

The U.S. "reservations" about Hamid Karzai are just laconic. karzai is not a legitimate leader but he remains in power as a fig leaf of the U.S. occupation. The only support he has in Afghanistan is from his corrupt officials who are becoming millionaires - like Haliburton's 100.000 contractors became in Iraq. And, of course, those officials have appointed all the bureaucracy of Karzai, and rumors have that they are getting kickbacks from their appointees when they collect their salaries. And Karzai's brother Ahmed Walid is both on the Afghan government payroll, and the CIA payroll! (N.Y. Times, October 27, 2009)

But let's forget the elections because it doesn't really matter that Abdullah dropped out, or if the Second Round of elections was cancelled, or if Karzai remains a figurehead president. The elections in Afghanistan was an American farce to convince the world that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a presence by invitation of the duly elected Afghan government - if anybody believes that! Hamid Karzai is today an anachronistic puppet president akin to Philippe Petain, the head of the Vichy regime established in occupied France by the Germans during World War II. He will serve the occupier -like Petain did, but when the war in Afghanistan ends, he will not be there - as Petain wasn't. He will have either the deadly fate of Babrak Karmal, or Hajifullah Amin, or he will live in exile- like Vietnam's last U.S. puppeteers, Diem Van Thieu and Van Cao Ky. Some Muslims have commented that Karzai get directs deposit of his presidential salary from the U.S. at a Bank in Virginia, where the son of the former Shah of Iran, Reza, also lives. Virginia has become the
CIA repository of off-the-shelf puppet leaders in waiting.

Now. How Obama's long term strategy in Afghanistan will then succeed in the much touted 10-year plan? It won't! That is why Joseph Stalin said about the German forces marching to Russia: "Let the dead march!" He knew the Germans couldn't fight effectively in the Siberian winter, and he knew he could destroy them in the long term. Also, Van Gao Giap, the famous North Vietnamese Defense minister, said after the U.S. defeat in Vietnam: "We knew that we will prevail, even if it took time, because "victory" is was the ultimate goal of the Vietnamese military sciences." And as it happened in France, in Russia, to imperial Japan, and in Vietnam, it will happen in Afghanistan too. Invaders and puppet regimes don't last for ever. Karzai may be temporarily happy, but he knows his tenure is borrowed time from the U.S. forces. He can continue to be what is cynically describer as "the Mayor of Kabul" inside Afghanistan, and titular president outside of it. But his cosmetic presidential title, and Obama's cosmetic Nobel prize laureate title, won't solve the Afghan war. The Afghan war will be resolved according to the precedents of history - as aforementioned above. And history always repeats itself, because those who don't know history repeat the errors of the past. Nikos Retsos, retired professor

[jefleshman]

So based on your post the close to 4 million Afghan citizens (these are the numbers from the "fraud" ballets removed from BOTH sides)are all Puppets!

Sad, very sad.