Afghanistan’s election commission said today that President Hamid Kazai continues to hold a wide lead over the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. With almost half the vote counted in the presidential election, Karzai has almost 46 percent to about 33 percent for Abdullah. But the results continue to be clouded by reports of fraud, which have increased substantially in recent days.
Karin von Hippel, a senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., just returned from monitoring the elections in Afghanistan. She speaks with Daljit Dhaliwal about how the security situation affected the vote.
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Also in Afghanistan today, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, delivered an assessment of the war there. In a statement, McChrystal said “The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment, and resolve, and increased unity of effort.”
Can U.S. and NATO forces win the war in Afghanistan?
Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
09/09/2009 :: 03:41:57 PM
Nick Ramus Says:
We abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet debacle. At a time we could have invested in infrastructure, agriculture, education which is a much smaller price to pay than warfare. Warfare is the most expensive way to put forth a political agenda. But that is water under the bridge, all those that wish to abandon Afghanistan must realize the end result would be another training ground for anti-Western Jihadists. So, we tried the hands off approach and it became the most expensive way to go.
The West can’t ignore the region because of the Islamic hotbed of violence, hatred that is fueled against the West. No matter what the problem of many Islamic cultures they blame the West out of course without any rationale or proof. Their hatred against us is cultural but especially religious. They view Christianity as a force that wishes to strip Islam of faith. They are at war with the imagination of Christian faith which is not supported by the Koran. Christians and Jews are both people of the book, ie “the Bible!” Therefore Christians and Jews have special dispensation according to Islam, this is no longer the case under radical Islam. Christians and Jews are the most hated above and beyond Islamic normal hatreds against Infidels, Kafirs those that do not worship using the Bible.
The Western world must wake up and appreciate this seed change in the people that rabidly choose us as enemies. No matter what unilateral action we choose, thinking we will change our status as chosen enemies of Islam, we have no such ability to change that status.
Islamists will replace modern banking with an acceptable Sharia form of financial transaction. Islamists will conquer the remain non-Muslim lands in order to prepare the way for their Messiah, who will not come until the world is Islamic.
The only form of government for the entire world including all Western countries and Asia will be the Caliphate, that golden realm of paradise on earth.
Western people do not know any of these factors and yet they are core realities that cause young Muslims to suicide themselves to paradise, it causes young Jihadis to slaughter unarmed men and women in Mumbai, India and if given the chance they will suicide themselves with nuclear weapons insead of semtex and ball bearings.
Perhaps only 20% of Islamic youth fall prey to radical Islamic Mullahs, but in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only education often is by the radical Mullahs in religious schools paid for by Jihadist leaning Muslims all over thw world.
We have tried letting the fight come to us and 9/11 was the result. There were over 800 such Islamic attacks all over the world by the same people before our own 9/11. What average American and European understand the depth of Islamic desire to remake the world into their Jihadist visions? This will not change by abandoning the fight, it will only bring it to our streets. No matter what it takes, I suggest leaving it in their streets. On an earlier post I saw a complaint about 1 million Iraqi civilians having been killed. Maybe you would prefer those casualties in London or Berlin, New York? The war will not change for a long time to come, only where we fight it. We have yet to convince young Muslims to value their lives more than the imagination of a few evil Mullahs luring them to their deaths. Iran, Hezzbollah, Palestinian groups are more examples of the same ideological genre of Islamic world domination by Jihadis. We will be lucky to save Pakistan, we will be lucky to contain the fight in South Asia without a world war, without nuclear exchanges! Get it, it is much more serious then you understand.