By Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D.(Michigan State University)

It is sad that the USA, has decided to forget about vote rigging by President Karzai in the Afghanistan Election and has accepted Karzai as the President of Afghanistan for another five year term.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ This decision was in the face of definite evidence that up to 20% of the ballots cast at the Presidential Election were fraudulent. In fact Peter Galbraith, the most senior American Diplomat at the UN Mission in Afghanistan who said that results from 1000 polling stations should be annulled and votes from 5000 recounted has been dismissed from his job by the US Administration for speaking the truth- that the counting and the election was a fraud.(The Times, UK:1/10/09)

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Election monitors had opined that as many as a third of KarzaiƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s votes , amounting to over a million were potentially fraudulent.(Jason Ditz:Obama decides Karzai to Stay in Power Despite Fraud)

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ The decision of the USA Administration to support Karzai as the President of Afghanistan, despite the rampant fraud does not come as a surprise to me, because not long ago, President George W. Bush won the Presidency, not once but twice in 2000 and again in 2004 through fraudulent manipulation.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ In 2000 I was a keen listener glued to the Television to hear of how the key elections officers in charge of the count were adopting delaying tactics which led to the election issues ending up in the Supreme Court of Florida. Once I was in charge of parliamentary elections in certain districts in Sri Lanka and if I had adopted such delaying tactics and had not ensured the orderly counting of ballots, I would have been sentenced to imprisonment and would have been summarily dismissed from my post in the Administrative Service. The Florida Supreme Court ordered a recount of key counties where frauds had taken place but the Federal Supreme Court decided that the decision of the Florida Supreme Court to ensure that the ballots were counted was wrong and ordered a stop. George W. Bush crept into the Presidency hiding behind the cloaks of the Supreme Court Judges. It was a hilarious act- so hilarious that I collected the material and set it before the public in my book:The Administrative Bungling that Hijacked the 2000 US Presidential Election, (The University Press of America)

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ In the 2004 US Presidential Election, the Democrats were ever ready with armies of lawyers and bureaucrats and kept air planes at the ready to rush them to counties where the counting was going to be fraudulent, like in the case of the 2000 Election. But what happened was unpredicted in the annals of election administration. It was done by counting the ballots with fraudulent voting machinery. Voting machinery have had a history of faulty totaling, but this was not highlighted because there was a paper documentation that could be double checked in case there was any cause for concern. But sad to say the Democrats slipped very badly because in key States where the fraudulent counting took place there was no paper documentation. There was evidence that the counting was rigged but the totals coffed up by the machines had to be accepted as gospel truth purely because there was nothing that could be done to find out the real voting. It was a fantastic method of winning an election- a superb method of robbing an election which I have documented in my book:The Electronic Stealing of the 2004 US Presidential Election(Amazon.Com/BookSurge)

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Today we are seeing the USA acting in a high handed, totally undemocratic manner against sovereign countries.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Pakistan was forced to allow airspace for the US armed forces to attack Afghanistan and once it was reported that all the foreign debts of Pakistan were to be foregone for allowing that airspace. More recently President Musharaff came into the open to state that he was firmly told to allow airspace and other facilities for the US armed forces and that if he did not accede to it, Pakistan would be reduced to rubble.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Today we are seeing with our own eyes how the United States forces are attacking Pakistan. Now=2 0it is said that Osama Bin Laden has taken refuge in Pakistan and under this pretext attacks are mounted on Pakistan soil. To my thinking the time is near where Pakistan will disintegrate in the manner of Somalia purely due to the action of the USA.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ These days Israel is throwing out East Palestinians out of their hearth and homes, destroying them and building new Jewish settlements. The ousted families seated on their mattresses on the roads moan watching their homes being bulldozed. I saw on television a journalist documenting this horror being chased away. Their protests are silenced. All this has the grace and blessings of the United States. Earlier, when Israel attacked Gaza it was found that Israel had even used white phospherous. The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas. All these inhuman acts of Israel are ignored by the USA.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Sri Lanka was riddled with terrorist attacks by the LTTE for the last three decades and in fact the incidence of attacks in all parts of Sri Lanka was so frequent that no one could walk safe. It even happened that in any one family, the husband and wife never traveled together for fear of being blasted together which meant the siblings would end up being orphans. In many a bomb blast hundreds were killed and the LTTE was declared a terrorist organization by both Britain and the USA. But sad to say when the President of Sri Lanka took on the terrorists head on in 2006, and when the terrorists were cornered to a small stretch of land and about to be dealt with the final blow the USA, Britain, along with Canada and France all wanted the Government of Sri Lanka to cease fire. Up till then the Superpowers- led by the USA were advocating that terrorism had to be annihilated from the face of the Earth, But now comes the pleas and pleading at first and the warnings later to stop attacking the terrorists.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It becomes a new phase of the Superpowers deciding that a particular terrorist organization- the LTTE should not be totally wiped out. The President of Sri Lanka was right in not listening to them because he was acting in his own country and terrorism was dealt with the last blow. Then the United States Administration has thought it fit to invite the same terrorist organizationƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s diaspora and is now trying to support them to resurrect the terrorist organization.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Today instead of congradulating the President of Sri Lanka and the chief architects for their victory on the terrorists- on the most ruthless terrorist organization in the World, the Administration of the USA is today actively documenting the instances where it could be construed that human rights were violated in the attempt to rid Sri Lanka of terrorrist LTTE. A Report is said to have been prepared under the leadership of no less a person than Robert Blake the former US Ambassador in Sri Lanka who is now in charge of South Asia in the US Administration. Sri Lanka has no skeletons to be unearthed. It was an operation on Sri Lankan soil and the human shield that the terrorists had built was saved. If the strategies being used by the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan had been used this human shield would have perished. The World should also know that this is the only War where the enemy was provided with food, consumer goods, all free of charge- everything other than weapons was provided. In all other wars the enemy is starved to make them surrender.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It is evident that the United States that is breathing fire in Iraq and Afghanistan has been tamed to be a poodle by the LTTE terroristƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s diaspora. It is a well known fact that the terrorist organization had provided funds for Senator Clinton to fight the election. Money talks in strange tongues!

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ The USA is now attempting to bring the Sri Lankan Armed Forces into disrepute. Senator Hilary Clinton, the Secretary of State in her speech at the Security Council Meeting on 28/9/2009 has stated that rape has been used as a tactic of war in Bosnia, Burma and Sri Lanka. The US Ambassador in Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis has clarified this statement by adding that Senator Clinton did not implicate any specific perpetrators during her speech at the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Evidently the Senator was attempting to obliterate the good name that the Armed Forces in Sri Lanka have earned in wiping terrorism from within the island of Sri Lanka. No one has alleged that the Sri Lankan Army has used rape as a tactic of war and it is very unbecoming of the US Administration to make unsubstantiated statements at meetings of an august body like the United Nations.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ If Senator Clinton wants to know it is the American Forces that have been held for rape as a tactic of war as is evident from the following statement from Wikipedia.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_rape

Asia

Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. A young ethnic Chinese woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army’s “comfort battalions” is interviewed by an Allied officer.

The term “comfort women” is a euphemism for the estimated 200,000, mostly Korean and Chinese, women who were forced to work as prostitutes in Japanese military brothels during World War II.[53]

“A former prostitute recalled that as soon as Australian troops arrived in Kure in early 1946, they ‘dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly every night’.”[54][55]

It has been claimed that some U.S. soldiers raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. There were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of20Kanagawa prefecture.[56]

Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes based on several years of research:

Soon after the U.S. marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the marines “mopped up” the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started “hunting for women” in broad daylight and those who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.[57]

53. ^ Comfort Women Were ‘Raped’: U.S. Ambassador to Japan

54. ^ Eiji Takemae, Robert Ricketts, Sebastian Swann, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy. p.67(Google.books)

55. ^ For detailed accounts of rapes by Australian occupation troop during the occupation of Japan, see Allan Clifton, “Time of Fallen Blossoms”. Australian Military Gang Rape of ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Fallen BlossomsƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢

56. ^ Schrijvers, Peter (2002). The GI War Against Japan. New York City: New York University Press. p. 212. ISBN 0814798160.

57. . ^ Tanaka, Toshiyuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II, Routledge, 2003, p.111. ISBN 0203302753

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It has also to be stated emphatically that it is the American Armed Forces that can be proved to have used rape as a tactic of war in many instances in the past. The USA has too many skeletons in their own cupboard-scattered from Diago Garcia, to Vietnam, to Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Senator Clinton should be aware that the USA stands discredited today in the World as a belligerent Superpower on the rampage. The USA does not follow democracy any more. Democracy, Human Rights have all gone through the window and the USA has now descended to the position of a helpless Superpower that has failed not only to wipe out the terrorist that they pursued in foreign countries but has also failed in rebuilding its own economy that is today riddled with a 9.8% unemployment- the highest level in 26 years, failed financial institutions and bankrupt banks, without any hope of recovery in sight. Providing stabilization finance, increasing Keynesian type of infrastructure expenditure alone cannot bring about the lost production base. The statement of Senator Clinton appears to be the wild utterances of a drowning person in distress.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Gone are the principles that President Obama said he will uphold=2 0if he becomes President. Gone are the utterances of President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Nation shall under God, have a new birth of freedom and that Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth. The USA has a sixth of its population without health insurance, perishing when they fall sick and frail as they cannot afford the treatment- all this in the richest country on earth, while its leaders try to rule the world with the sword!

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It is up to the enlightened President Obama to reclaim the USA from its present belligerent role. Let us hope that he does not follow his predecessor, President George W. Bush who took the USA to the brink of disaster. May he realize that the United States of America is strong and blessed with ample resources and that the USA stands to gain more in dignity and prestige by cooperating with other sovereign countries that are trying to annihilate terrorism.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Garvin Karunaratne,Ph.D.(Michigan State University)

Formerly of the Administrative Service of Sri Lanka,

October 3, 2009