Puppet Theatre

[skunk]

Afghan polling 'marked by fraud'

Election officials have said ballot counting is over
A leading group of election observers say there was widespread voting fraud and intimidation during Thursday's presidential election in Afghanistan.
Stuffed ballot boxes, illiterate voters being told who to vote for and biased officials were cited by Afghanistan's Free and Fair Election Foundation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8215612.stm

We have absolutely no idea why we are in Afghanistan. We have nowhere near enough troops there to achieve anything meaningful, even if we knew what we were trying to achieve. All we and the US have achieved is to substitute one bunch of corrupt thugs for another. The so-called "government" has no control outside Kabul, most of them are on the take, the position of women in Afghanistan is as bad as it was under the Taleban: in fact, the only thing that seems to be improved under the present regime appears to be the opium harvest.

It is high time we left the area alone. If the USA wants to keep its sticky fingers in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and any other 'Stan it can pronounce the name of, cosying up to the worst and most corrupt of governments in its search for hegemony of freedom-loving nations, let it. We, the UK, have no legitimate business there.

[leekohler]

It's too bad. I have always supported the Afghanistan effort. It's a shame what's happening though. If we can't get it together, then yes, we should leave.

[Zombie Acorn]

I just say **** it, pull all of our troops from the area.

[obeygiant]

From the article:

The group said militants had sliced a finger off two voters in southern Kandahar province.
"Our observers saw two voters whose fingers, with the ink [a fraud prevention measure], was cut off in Kandahar. This was on election day," the foundation's chairman Nader Nadery was quoted as saying.
Threats of violence against voters came from local powerbrokers, the Taliban and rival political camps according to the foundation, which sent about 7,000 observers around the country.
Election officials have estimated turnout at between 40 and 50% which, if confirmed, would be well down on the 70% who voted in the first presidential election, in 2004.
Thursday's voting passed off relatively peacefully amid threats of Taliban attacks. The EU election observer mission said the election was well organised and was a victory for the Afghan people.

If anything "we" are there to keep the cavemen Taliban from taking over the country. It doesn't matter if the Hello Kitty Party is in power there, we don't want Afghanistan to be like it was pre-2001. If anyone didn't already know the Taliban is a pack of smelly illiterate ass****s and the ONLY language they understand is sustained deadly force.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by leekohler

It's too bad. I have always supported the Afghanistan effort. It's a shame what's happening though. If we can't get it together, then yes, we should leave.

Originally Posted by obeygiant

If anything "we" are there to keep the cavemen Taliban from taking over the country.

So after ... eight years of our renewed presence there in numbers, there's an election, and the Taliban are cutting people's fingers off because they voted?

I honestly think that this effort was not only misguided from the outset but that we knew this perfectly well a decade ago. Between the culture, the history, and the geography, this was never a war any army of arbitrarily high sophistication could have hoped to win.

Do I like the Taliban? No, of course not. But is there any history of unseating a force like them successfully in this way? Even if they were not in a place as inhospitable to a war campaign as Afghanistan?

I'm not sure how to win here... with Sudan as one of the closer cousins to this situation, is a place where our earnest attempts at diplomacy (which we did not use with the Taliban) are not working, either. But this clearly is not working.

[Ugg]

Originally Posted by mkrishnan

I'm not sure how to win here... with Sudan as one of the closer cousins to this situation, is a place where our earnest attempts at diplomacy (which we did not use with the Taliban) are not working, either. But this clearly is not working.

Send in massive amounts of birth control pills maybe????

Until Afghanistan can begin to generate enough jobs to employ its young people, there's little hope of any kind of stable civil society.

Overpopulation is the root of the problem.

[skunk]

Originally Posted by obeygiant

If anything "we" are there to keep the cavemen Taliban from taking over the country. It doesn't matter if the Hello Kitty Party is in power there, we don't want Afghanistan to be like it was pre-2001. If anyone didn't already know the Taliban is a pack of smelly illiterate ass****s and the ONLY language they understand is sustained deadly force.

The trouble with your argument is that the Taliban are largely in control, the Hello Kitty Party is not, and apart from a less obvious Al Qaeda presence, the country is very much like it was pre-2001. The place is awash with dirty money, our missions have replaced some of the warlords while reinforcing others, and the people of Afghanistan are left in much the same state as they were in before. Calling the Taliban names is hardly effective, and frankly the difference between the Taliban cutting off fingers and NATO blowing innocent villagers to pieces is notional at best.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by Ugg

Overpopulation is the root of the problem.

Interesting thought, but my counter-argument would be that, in essence, it is a symptom of the larger problem, which is that we (both the East and the West) have tried to impose modern civilized life on a people who aren't ready for it. That in turn lead to overpopulation. Maybe we just need to leave them alone and at least give them an opportunity to evolve a way of living that they find suitable to themselves....

[miloblithe]

Originally Posted by Ugg

Send in massive amounts of birth control pills maybe????

Until Afghanistan can begin to generate enough jobs to employ its young people, there's little hope of any kind of stable civil society.

Overpopulation is the root of the problem.

Then we should continue to support the public health efforts going on there. Total fertility (children per woman) has dropped from 7.48 in 2000 to 6.91 in 2007. Meanwhile life expectancy has risen from 42 to 44. Measles immunisation rates grew from 35% of children under 1 in 2000 to 64% in 2005.

http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti= 2007$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0TAlJeCEzcGQ;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuy j2tPLxKvvnNPA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=C ATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=0.842;dataMax=8.7$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=12;dataMax=83$map_s;s ma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=i1_t001960,,,,

Excruciatingly slow progress, but some is being made.

[obeygiant]

Originally Posted by mkrishnan

Interesting thought, but my counter-argument would be that, in essence, it is a symptom of the larger problem, which is that we (both the East and the West) have tried to impose modern civilized life on a people who aren't ready for it. That in turn lead to overpopulation. Maybe we just need to leave them alone and at least give them an opportunity to evolve a way of living that they find suitable to themselves....

I don't think educating women and treating them better than you would treat dirt is too much to impose as civilized life. Or appreciating history instead of blowing it up because it doesn't jibe with the laws of Allah. If we could set the way-back machine for the 1700s or 1800s maybe that would work, but I think we're looking at a pandora's box situation here.