November 15, 2004
Faces of War
The PBS Newhour last night featured an interview with a journalist who's just returned from observing the election in Afghanistan. He reports that it was riddled with fraud, made easy by the simple trick of providing the wrong kind of ink. Instead of marking a voter for a couple of days, it washed off with water right away. Perhaps someone forgot that in some parts of the world people still wash their hands many times a day.
Fraud has to be a little more sophisticated in this country to work. No doubt the result is the same.
The reporter also explained that the warlords are no longer running the country. They've all been transformed into gangsters. They collect taxes from the marijuana and poppy farmers and from those who export the drugs and rule, as gangster usually do, through intimidation.
Which isn't all that different from what's happening in America. Only, we still have a warlord in the White House. In fact, he's the chief warlord. He's got his finger on the most destructive implements of war ever invented. Blowing up little children and desecrating the holy places of Islam is just the tiniest taste of what's going on.