You Will Anyway: What?

Thursday, March 17, 2005

What?

Isn't Afghanistan already a shining example of democracy?

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has said parliamentary elections scheduled for May will now take place in September.

Speaking in Kabul after talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, President Karzai blamed the delay on “technical matters”.
article

The Iraqi "elections" on the other hand, couldn't be rescheduled come Hell or high water.

A bomb blast in southern Afghanistan killed at least five people on Thursday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a one-day trip aimed at congratulating the country for its steps toward democracy.
[...]
[Rice] met President Hamid Karzai, who was handpicked by Washington to head a transitional government after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden [...]
[...]
After throwing out the Taliban, it set the country on the path to its first democratic presidential election in 2004, which Karzai easily won.
Reuters article

Now, when Hugo Chávez makes any move in Venezuela, the hue and cry goes up from Washington that he's trying to thwart democracy and install himself permanently. I guess that's because Chávez is a bad guy, and Karzai is a good guy.

Thursday's blast in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, 290 miles south of Kabul, was the worst bomb attack in the country since August.

More than 30 people were wounded and a senior security officer blamed fighters loyal to the ousted Taliban government for the attack.

The blast underscored the fragile security situation in the country and the threat the fledgling democracy faces from Taliban militants. Rice will discuss this threat and the burgeoning drugs trade.
[...]
About 18,000 U.S.-led troops are stationed in the country fighting a lingering Taliban insurgency [...]

Want a good laugh? Read the rest of this Reuters article (or at least the final section "Bleak City"). A bizarre article, to be sure. As blindly paradoxical as your average American's thought processes.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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Daily Twain:

And other words of wisdom...

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins

[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison, 4th President of the United States

No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn

They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman

When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern

Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. ~Ojibway saying