Fraud Was Rampant In Afghan Election

Right after the September 18th Afghan parliamentary elections, I did a post saying that widespread election fraud was believed to have taken place.   It now looks like that fraud was on a larger scale than anyone expected.   Both Afghan and Western officials are now saying that about 25% of all the votes are expected to be thrown out.

That's incredible that at least one of every four votes was cast fraudulently.   It is expected that as many as a million votes could be nullified.   The Afghan Independent Election Commission says they have partially or completely nullified the votes in 430 polling sites.   They are also auditing the vote in another 830 polling sites (and could partially or completely nullify the vote in those also).

The New York Times is reporting the fraud "included ballot-box stuffing, citizens forced to cast their vote at gunpoint, corrupt election officials and security forces complicit with corrupt candidates."   The Commission was originally supposed to announce the results of the election on Sunday, but at the last minute that put that off until at least Wednesday.   They said about 11% of the vote still had not been counted.

I am amazed that anyone can say with a straight face that Afghanistan has a democratic form of government.   Even if the results are announced on Wednesday, how can anyone trust those results?   With the knowledge that at least 25% of the votes were cast fraudulently, the question remains, how can anyone be sure the other 75% were not also fraudulent (or at least a significant part of them)?   This is not a democracy.   It is governance by corruption.

And the worst part of all is that American soldiers are dying to protect this corrupt system (not to mention the soldiers of some other Western nations).   In the last week alone nine Marines were killed in just one battalion.   It was not worth the life of even one of those Marines to defend that corrupt government.

President Obama has said we will stay in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2011 -- another 14-15 months.   The purpose of our staying is to protect the Afghan government until they can protect themselves.   After the current fraudulent election (and the previous presidential election was no better), it is clear that Karzai's corrupt government is not worth protecting.   They are as bad, if not worse, than the government they replaced.

Once again, the United States has failed at nation-building (as if Vietnam wasn't enough).   It is time to cut our losses and bring all our troops back home.