From to time to time, I will complain, that I am tired of choosing leaders for other nations.
Since November 2016, I have been especially well aware of how badly it can go, when people in one nation choose leaders for another. This was on the occasion of people in another nation choosing a leader for me. Those people, in the other nation, could not have chosen a worse leader for me, if they were trying.
Which, perhaps, they were.
This brings me to the point, that one tool I frequently make use of, when I choose leaders for other nations, is to manipulate their elections.
I have recently manipulated an election in Afghanistan, by delaying it, until July.
To be honest, here, I think I have far better reason for this particular manipulation, than I usually do. Here is the Washington Post, explaining what I have done, from the perhaps quite conflicted perspective of someone in Kabul:
“The delay has no technical reason. It was the wish of America to delay the polls because of the peace process,” said Abdul Shokoor Dadras, an analyst in Kabul. If the election were to be held without waiting for the results of negotiation efforts, he said, “then that may have meant the end of the peace process.”
For reasons I will explain below, I am nonetheless still very tired of the election manipulation activity I engage in.
As historical background, a trick I will often play on Afghanistan, is to get them to hold an election, and then manipulate the election in ways that are in my own interests.
Before the election, I will play up how positive elections are, and how much legitimacy an election will bring to the leader I choose.
Then after the election, I will play up how fraudulent it had been.
That the election would prove fraudulent was, of course, something I was well aware of beforehand. But I would pretend, beforehand, that I did not know.
Frequently choosing leaders for other nations has made me rather jaded and cynical, in addition to being very tired. But the level of fraud, in elections, in Afghanistan, can rise to a level that still shocks me. Whole provinces have previously been, without exaggeration, one big ballot box stuffing.
This shocking level of vote fraud, though, I can work to my own interests. It leaves the leader I have chosen weakened and without legitimacy. So that leader is especially dependent on me for power, and must do what I say, rather than do what they think is best for Afghanistan.
It is one of my most cynical, jaded, and obnoxious tricks, to choose a leader for another nation, and manipulate him into a position where he must do what I say, but then sneer at him for being a puppet.
Hamid Karzai, for example. He was such a puppet. And he never did what I told him to do, either.
That sneering actually just enhances my power. It is a very Donald-Trump-like trick. Don't imagine me as some sort of anti-Imperialist, when I do it.
Occasionally, the leader I have chosen for Afghanistan, and put in a position of weakness, will turn to the warlords to back him, instead of me.
I can often effectively counteract this move, by railing about the warlords, and sneering at the leader for turning to them. Then, after I have stymied the leader’s move to be independent of me, I will return to calling him a puppet.
These warlords, of course, who I frequently rail against, I had put back in power in the first place, after the Taliban, a bunch of religious purists, who I portrayed as nothing but bad, until I started negotiating peace with them, had kicked them out.
I can be exceptionally obnoxious in how I treat Afghanistan, and jerk it around. I tend to be rather sanctimonious, too, in how I go about it.
I will mention, here, another trick that I play. You might watch out for it.
After the shockingly large vote fraud, there will be an effort to toss out fraudulent votes. In this tossing out of votes, whole Afghan provinces, whole districts, and whole voting stations, can end up disenfranchised.
You will never find me, or any other American, mentioning the disenfranchisement, though. You will only find us playing up the fraud.
You might deduce, from this, that our caring about the integrity of elections, in Afghanistan, is not very real.
If whole states, in the United States, were disenfranchised, because of vote fraud, and eliminated from having a vote, we would certainly notice this part, in addition to the fraud.
Before describing my current manipulation of an election in Afghanistan, and some of the background factors to it, and how these factors make me so very tired, despite the good intention behind my manipulation, I would like to bring up the subject of quagmire, in long American wars.
You will sometimes see people, on the internet, or in the newspapers, using the word quagmire, about the war in Afghanistan, to back up the idea that Americans should leave.
I do not think that this is paying much attention to what quagmire means. That if you try to climb yourself out, you just end up sinking in deeper. Whatever move you make, makes it worse.
And we will be sinking in pretty deep, ahead.
Ashraf Ghani, who John Kerry and I had made president of Afghanistan, back in 2014, but putting him in a complicated, hobbled, and ineffective power sharing scheme, before our then complaining about how ineffective he is, has selected Asadullah Khalid as Minister of Defense.
Ghani has made this move to shore himself up, after rumors spread around by American newspapers, said that Donald Trump would soon be withdrawing half of American forces from Afghanistan, a move that would put Ghani in an even more precarious position than he is now.
And also, to shore himself up, because the recent progress towards a peace settlement for Afghanistan, between me and the Taliban, is the leaving the current government of Afghanistan out.
And also, to shore himself up, by putting Khalid on his side in the upcoming elections, which I have manipulated by delay, which works against Ghani.
Khalid is not a warlord, precisely. He is a former head of secret police, and has, using language like a human rights organization might use, a considerable record of credible allegations of torture and human rights violation against him.
After Khalid was gravely wounded, by a rectum bomber, back in 2012, he was allowed into the United States for a long period of medical treatment recovery, requiring a waiver, from the U.S. State Department, to let him in, despite the considerable record of allegations of torture.
So Ghani is putting Khalid, a torturer, in, because Khalid is an anti-Taliban hardliner, and because he puts Khalid on his side, in the upcoming elections, which I am trying to manipulate, by delay, in the interests of peace, and against Ghani, who I had installed in the first place, but then weakened, leaving him likely to make such moves.
I have made a New Year’s resolution, about going to the gym.
I like the endless staircase machine. You keep climbing, but never get to the top.
Considering all the surrounding circumstances of my current manipulating of an election in Afghanistan, discussed in the section above, and considering how very very tired of it I am, I might be tempted to tell you I have also made a resolution not to do such things any more.
If I told you such a thing, though, you would see right through me. I am just going to keep doing such things, no matter how much I complain about it, or resolve not to.