Cold Mountain
A few thoughts on the Iraqi election. If I'm not mistaken, this the first free election in any Arab country ever. And, no, don't even think about mentioning those periodic shams where 99.99% turnout and 99.99% of those endorse wholeheartedly what ever Grand Poobah for Life happens to be at the top of he body pile at the moment.
Thw left typically, blew a fuse. Ted "I Sweat Chivas" Kennedy and his sidekick, whatshisname, the other guy from Massachusetts, both stumbled all over themselves trying to disparage the courage of the 60 odd per cent of Iraqi voters who turned out. Think about that percentage..it's a hell of sight better than we ever manage here in Godzone, and we can vote from bed.
Hillary, bless her, may be a little lefty Lenin in waiting, but she is not stupid. You didn't hear Hils dissing the election. Of cousre that all adds up to a republican wet dream for 2008--Hils as candidate and Howard Dean as Demo part chief. It's as if Labour made Tandor Nanczos chairman and ran Margaret Wilson as Party Leader.
2 comments:
Astonishing, truly astonishing....or maybe not.
After all it is exactly this sort of ahistorical, self-aggrandizing muddle that has brought about the current "relationship" between the U.S. (and some European powers) and the Arab-Moslem world.
What about the election of Mossadegh in 1951? Oh, I see; if democracy - no more flawed than that in Florida, to be sure - throws up a pliant toad amenable to US interests then THAT is democracy, THAT is an election that counts.
What about Algeria in 1991, an election held up at the time by international observers as a model of cleanliness? Oh, well, I guess if THOSE sort of parties are going to participate in an election and actually do well, well then, I mean, we can't have THAT sort of election count, can we?
Or what about Iraq itself? Its first post-Brit election in 1925 was virtually identical in terms of participation (by men only, of course) and overall outcome but almost immediately the government was in crisis because it was subject to such overwhelming pressure by the UK that it coughed up an oil concession for the former overlords that proved the government was nothing more than a fiction. Or how about Iraq in 1953? Even the fact that they had 10 governments between 1925 and Kassem's coup of 1958 which eventually led to Saddam doesn't disadvantage their democratic record when compared with that bastion of democracy (and great friend in the War on Terror), Italy.
But I guess these elections just didn't work like the current one, one that fits so well into a self-serving narrative designed, alas for the Arabs, not to laud their freedom no matter where it might lead them, but to generate and perpetuate a myth big enough to throw huge red, white, and blue doily over the gazillion-pound elephant that just won't leave the goddam room - the transparent lie of Bush's rationale for war in the first place and his utter failure to hold anyone, least of all himself, to account for that lie.
Oh, and we mustn't forget the OTHER big advantage that this election offers, not to the Arabs, silly - they don't matter - but to the Republicans, as Mr Firmin points out. And I completely agree with him; once the shells are in motion the Democrats look pretty silly pointing to anyone one of them, especially since the bloody pea is still in the shill's pocket....
I guess I can expect Mr Firmin to say, in a self-righteous huff, that the Iranians are not Arab. So be it.
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