Washington praises Afghan election fiasco to justify war escalation
22 August 2009President Barack Obama spoke to reporters on the White House lawn Friday, declaring that the August 20 presidential election in US-occupied Afghanistan was “an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future.”
On Thursday, in a radio interview, he praised what he termed “a successful election in Afghanistan despite the Taliban’s effort to disrupt it,” while vowing that his administration would stay “focused on finishing the job in Afghanistan.”
Whether Obama knew it or not, his remarks echoed those delivered by one of his predecessors, who heaped similar praise on a vote that had taken place in a country thousands of miles away, while promising that US troops there would soon “finish the job.”
The year was 1967, the president was Lyndon B. Johnson and the election was in Vietnam. Johnson described the Vietnamese going to the polls as evidence of “dramatic progress” and invoked it as a legitimization of the steady escalation of the US war—now supposedly in defense of an “elected government.” Within months, the Vietnamese liberation movement launched the Tet Offensive and Johnson was forced to foreswear a second term.
Clearly, there are major differences between Vietnam 42 years ago and Afghanistan today. There are, however, also striking similarities in the nature of the two elections and the way in which they have been manipulated to provide a democratic façade for colonial-style wars of aggression.
Both elections were carried out under the guns of US-led occupation forces. In both countries, any candidate opposing the US military presence in the country was prevented from running. And in both cases, the leading candidates were a collection of corrupt puppets who carried out wholesale ballot stuffing and electoral fraud.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/pers-a22.shtml
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