1115.org

The Times, U.K.: Afghanistan poll thrown into chaos as Karzai’s rival says: I won’t stand

The Guardian, U.K.: Blow to US and Britain as Abdullah withdraws from Afghan poll runoff

The White House: What, Me Worry?

Stephanopoulos asked (White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett) if Abdullah’s withdrawal will cast a cloud over Afghan President Hamid Karzai and make it more difficult for President Barack Obama to implement his strategy.

“We don’t think that’s it’s going to add a complication to the strategy,” she said. “It’s up to the Afghan people and their authorities to decide how to proceed going forward. We watch the election very carefully. And we’re going to work with the leader of the Afghan government, and hopefully that’s going to improve the state of conditions for the people in Afghanistan and also help us as we try to bring this war to a close.”

Stephanopoulos pressed: “So this is not a complication, as far as you see it?”

“No, we don’t see it as a complication,” Jarrett replied.

This almost matches the stuff we used to routinely see from the Bush White House. And Valerie Jarrett wasn’t out there in left-field by herself either. Hillary Clinton was singing the same song:

Even before Abdullah’s emotional announcement in front of thousands of supporters, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, insisted a withdrawal would not undermine Saturday’s election runoff.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election,” Clinton told reporters in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. “It’s a personal choice… We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward.”

Ah yes, for whatever combination of reasons. So what if the reasons include the legitimacy of the election you’re withdrawing from? So what if these fears of legitimacy are grounded in internationally-certified widespread fraud in the previous round of elections?

Why should Abdullah Abdullah’s decision to withdraw from the runoff for the Afghan presidency be any reflection on the legitimacy of the election any more than Dede Scozzafava’s decison to withdraw from the special election in the 23rd congressional district of New York undermines that contest?

In the time of Bush, going to a Baghdad market in bulletproof vests and under heavily armed escort was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.” In the time of Obama, the Afghan presidential election (where one-third of the votes Karzai got in the first round were declared to be fraudulent) is as unquestionably legitimate as the elections we see in our own country.

It’s true that after tossing out the fraudulent votes in the first round, Karzai was adjudged to have beaten Abdullah by 49.67% to 31%. It’s true that “Karzai … was widely favored to win the runoff anyway.” But does the Obama White House really want to argue that it doesn’t matter if an election is obviously tainted by fraud as long as the tainting candidate was expected to win anyway? (I’m thinking, of course, of a time in the not so distant past when Obama was not really expected to win the Democratic primary.)