{"id":5236,"date":"2014-04-07T13:28:58","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T13:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5236"},"modified":"2014-04-07T13:28:58","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T13:28:58","slug":"good-news-from-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5236","title":{"rendered":"Good news from Afghanistan?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Might there be a glimmer of hope finally in Afghanistan?<\/p>\n

The Afghans have conducted an election to choose their next president. The top two candidates, according to National Public Radio, are pro-Western in their leanings and are not allies of the outgoing — and unpredictable — Afghan President Hamid Karzai; indeed, Karzai’s hand-picked successor is running far behind the top two candidates.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304819004579485482622918584<\/p>\n

A runoff appears to be in the offing between opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah and former World Bank executive Ashraf Ghani.<\/p>\n

What’s more, the election produced a stunning 60 percent turnout in the face of attacks from Taliban terrorists who, of course, oppose elections of any stripe.<\/p>\n

Can this be a tipping point in the evolution of Afghanistan from a lawless, tribal society into one that is governed under the rule of laws that the rest of the civilized world understands?<\/p>\n

Hope should spring eternal.<\/p>\n

The United States already has ended its major combat role in Afghanistan after fighting an all-out war there against the Taliban since shortly after the 9\/11 attacks. More than a dozen years have passed. Too much American blood has been spilled in what had been thought to be a lost cause.<\/p>\n

It’s too early certainly to declare victory in a land with no known history of representative democracy. But with the impending election of either Ghani or Abdullah, the country appears to be headed toward a leadership that will tilt in our direction rather than toward the forces of evil.<\/p>\n

It’s now time for the world to begin holding its breath.<\/p>\n\n

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Might there be a glimmer of hope finally in Afghanistan? The Afghans have conducted an election to choose their next president. The top two candidates, according to National Public Radio, are pro-Western in their leanings and are not allies of the outgoing — and unpredictable — Afghan President Hamid Karzai; indeed, Karzai’s hand-picked successor is … Continue reading Good news from Afghanistan?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,166,168,2050,4501],"class_list":["post-5236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-911-attacks","tag-afghan-elections","tag-afghanistan","tag-hamid-karzai","tag-taliban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}