A great day for Afghanistan

Today marks the first election pretty much EVER in Afghanistan. After all the laborious and bloody birth pangs of war, this is like watching baby take his first steps. It's a beautiful thing.

I just love seeing the ballot boxes, lines of voters, and the election observers. Voter turnout was apparently quite high, including a large percentage of women.

Now, like manufacturing sausages, looking real close at how a democracy actually works might make you a little queasy. Nonetheless, women voting and even running for president warms my heart. Wow, who could have imagined such things in Afghanistan even just three years ago?

They're really catching on to the democracy thing, right down to the sore losers making largely bogus complaints that they were robbed. Makes me kind of nostalgic for Al Gore. It's a good thing that they have bunches of international observers on the ground to doublecheck. By best reports, though, it looks like it has been run pretty well on the up and up.

Best of all, the Taliban remnants were not able to significantly interfere with the process. That was the main fear, but they apparently have been beaten down enough that they simply didn't have the wherewithal to hinder the election.

This should be the tipping point. Afghanistan will soon have an officially and legitimately elected government for the first time ever. If the Taliban couldn't make even a dent in the electoral process, then they're probably pretty well done. Looks like Afghanistan's turning into a real country. Congratulations!

It's a great day to be a citizen of Afghanistan.