Crooked Victory?

“The election in Afghanistan has turned into a disaster for all who promoted it,” writes The Independent. “Hamid Karzai has been declared re-elected as President of the country for the next five years though his allies inside and outside Afghanistan know that he owes his success to open fraud. Instead of increasing his government’s legitimacy, the poll has further de-legitimised it. From Mr Karzai’s point of view he won through at the end and showed that nobody is strong enough to get rid of him. For the US President, Barack Obama, the election has no silver lining. It has left him poised to send tens of thousands more US troops to fight a war in defence of one of the world’s most crooked, corrupt and discredited governments.”