It is the Taliban who are victors. I'm sure within six to 12 months of Americans leaving Afghanistan, both Gani and Abdullah will be living in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, after escaping and stashing their luggage with stolen dollars. If they are unfortunately still in Kabul , when Taliban arrive ,they will be swinging on the branches of a large Chinar tree, a la Najib !
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Bail. We need to bail. These people have no idea how to govern themselves or exist in a Democracy. They have no desire to form a stable nation, they only want power and money. It's basically all the same warlords from the 1990s that run Afghanistan now. Just look at Dostum, he has been a warlord for 30 years and he still is.
The US has no reason to be in Afghanistan. It's been almost 20 years with no progress and no help from the Afghans. All their talent and principled people just left to go to America and the only people who can take down these warlords now are the Taliban.
I say we make an agreement with the Taliban that they will never allow international terrorists haven and then we leave. Right then, maybe a 3 month pullout. Let the Taliban destroy the warlords and let them create their little Islamic theocracy. If they fail to prevent terrorist from using their country as a base, we fire 1,000 tomahawk missles on every Taliban base we can find and call it good. If they do it again we turn their country to glass.
Well this is a good news for the voters in Florida. If you compare with Afghan election, the Floridians are better off. After all, it took usually only one month the count the vote in Florida.
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President of Afghanistan? Or Mayor of Kabul (during daytime hours)?
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Ashraf Ghani named winner of Afghan election may seem like the shaky democracy in Afghanistan may have taken superficial roots. Hopefully the continuity that Ghani will provide may result in a US-Taliban peace deal taking deeper roots for the benefit of all Afghans and peace in S Asia. Several lost opportunities during the Bush and Obama years to end the endless longest regime war will not be lost this time. Leave the Afghan people alone for once to live in peace, prosperity and spiritual well being. Afghanistan has a lot to offer the world to eradicate the invasion by a deadly , highly contagious Corona virus. of the most populated country in the world, China. Everyone knows the most cultivated crop in Afghanistan is opium but how many know that the second most cultivated crop is pomegranate? What is the significance of pomegranate? World wide Research laboratories have shown that pomegrantes are a rich source of broad spectrum enveloped virus neutralizing compounds (EVNCs) and could if studied reveal that COVID-19, the virus making rounds around the world, not just in China but all continents in the world except so far Africa and Antarctica.
Cash strapped Afghanistan may be sitting on a mine of red gold, pomegranates not just Lithium and opium. For it is not gold or Lithium that can has the antiviral that could save lives but make the war against the crown (Corona) virus one that will not be a never ending war.
https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/fvl-2017-0154
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@Girish Kotwal
Democracy is a process that needs time. The Afghan election may have irregularities but the country in on the right track and Ashraf Ghani is the rightful winner, no doubt about that. The losers need to adhere to the rules of the game - All elections have a winner and many loses which is fine.
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Just like Vietnam except for this one cost even more to support a caretaking government who can't even support the basic needs of the people let alone defending the pie in the sky democracy. Vietnam 2.0 is replaying in front of our eyes and the current government is going to collapse as soon as the retreating helicopter leaving from the top of the US embassy with hundreds of refugees trying to get on. Why the beltway elites keep on making the same mistake over and over again by meddling in parts of the faraway world where we receive little benefits except the empty idea of world hegemony.
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So, billions of dollars stolen by various Afghan politicians, and phony elections. Who cares now , lets get out and let them continue their tribal wars as long as they stay local,Once we leave the Taliban and the different groups in this, and ISIS and Pakistan secret police will all have at each other.
Trump will declare how great he is, we will be out trillions and have thousands receiving expensive medical care for war injuries and the contractors will began looking for us to start another war.
The American people will forget about all of this.
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Article identifies the newly elected leader of Afghanistan. I am not astute enough to know immediately if this leader is favorable to our country. I would like that information more “up-front” without necessarily reading into the article.
Thank you for all you are doing for our country!
Speaking only from the U.S. perspective, we should seize this election result, finalize our agreement with the Taliban and get our military out of Afghanistan. All sides in the domestic conflict in the country realize the consequences of again letting their territory serve as a base for an attack on the U.S. or its allies, so we should leave it at that and withdraw.
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Ashraf Ghani is the legitimate President of Afghanistan and the rightful winner of this election. Let him continue to do his job ethically and conscientiously.
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Variations on a theme:
Surprise, surprise.
Tell me something I didnt already know.
What took so long?
The certainty of death, taxes and Afghani presidential elections.
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Are there any issues at all that divide the candidates in this election? This article and the one from December both address only the details of a dispute between two sides about whose policies we are told nothing. I didn't realize there was an election. So could you tell me something about whether there is anything about policies -- attitude toward US, Taliban, health care, military spending, whatever issues they have over there -- that causes these two guys to be so vigorously opposing each other, and the people of Afghanistan not seeming to have shown up for it? Even a surface skim so a reader could have some idea of what this is all about without having to go to some other source for a more "in depth" analysis....
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@DJ
My thoughts exactly. This article is lacking a great deal of necessary information.
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@DJ
All of the division boils down to ethnic division at its core, and the majority of the vote is cast by people according to their ethnicity or whichever leader their main ethnic leader endorses. In addition, there have been widespread fraud and corruption in all the previous elections leading to people losing interest in elections. Many say "What's the point of it all when eventually the USA gets to decide who the winner is" like in the last election when John Kerry became a household name for a while there.
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