Matt McCarten: Afghan election scam a terrifying tragedy

I've been watching an immoral and farcical tragedy unfold in Afghanistan in the past fortnight, with a sense of despair. The world is pretending that, despite a few hiccups, the Afghan people have had the pleasure of electing a democratic government to govern them.

The presence of foreign soldiers, including Kiwis, makes it all possible. What delusional nonsense. We are part of a criminal con job and the sooner we admit it, the better.

After the suicidal attacks on America eight years ago, that dunce George W. Bush launched a revenge invasion on Afghanistan. He then hand-picked a political neophyte to head his vassal regime and it's been downhill ever since.

None of the 9/11 attackers were Afghan in the first place, but Bush's belligerence scared the rest of the world into giving him a free hand to invade that country.

To my shock, the Labour-Alliance Government in 2001 was swept up by the hysteria and joined in. Those of us who knew an imperialist crusade when we saw it were denounced as traitors and accused of supporting mass murder.

The Alliance leader, Jim Anderton, and I, as its president, were on opposing sides of this bitter argument. The split over the decision to send troops into Afghanistan ultimately led to the Alliance imploding and the Prime Minister calling an early election.

In left-wing politics, principles are everything and consequently many long-term friendships ended, including mine with Anderton. We haven't spoken since.

To my surprise, new Labour leader Phil Goff and Anderton were leading the opposition last week against sending troops. It is ironic that they didn't mind sending our soldiers to do exactly the same thing when they were running the government.

The blood of every innocent Afghan killed from here on in is on our hands.

Claims that we are sending troops to Afghanistan to make it secure and to keep the world safe from terrorism are blatant lies.

The so-called Afghan "election result" last week is a contemptible fraud.

The President's brother is a well-known drug runner. The two Vice-Presidents are known as criminal warlords. One of them imprisoned his enemies in a truck container, resulting in them being cooked alive.

The President only won the election because he bribed bandit warlords with money and political positions in his new Western-backed government. Hundreds of polling booths never existed, although they apparently received hundreds of thousands of votes.

The long list of allegations would be laughable if they weren't so tragic.

US top general David Petraeus publicly admitted that al Qaeda doesn't exist in the country. It is based in Pakistan. So now the West claims that the war is against the Taleban - not al Qaeda. The Taleban has no international terrorist network and there is no instance of any Afghan being involved in a terrorist plot anywhere in the world. The Taleban, while oppressive, is the Afghan local resistance, who see their fight as a war of liberation against foreign occupation. They have nothing to do with international terrorism.

The truth is that Western countries such as New Zealand have no idea what they've got themselves into. There is no exit strategy and we don't have any clear objectives. All the West has done is impose a corrupt regime over a formerly oppressive one.

Our military presence is immoral and will substantially increase the threat of terrorism, not eliminate it.

All the experts accept that the West's activities in Afghanistan are increasing the recruitment of al Qaeda terrorists elsewhere in the world.

Afghanistan is our generation's Vietnam.

We all love Barack Obama but that is no excuse for our politicians fawning to win his favour. To paraphrase US comedian Bill Maher, Obama is the US president - not our boyfriend. In the end, his job is to pursue American foreign policy and it is deplorable that he's got our gullible politicians to join him.