by The Dreyfuss Report
It doesn't matter how many people voted yesterday in Iraq. In the end, the Iraqi parliament that results from yesterday's vote will be illegitimate, having been elected under the guns of U.S. soldiers:
http://tompaine.com/archives/the_dreyfuss_report.php
January 31, 2005
It doesn’t matter how many people voted yesterday in Iraq. In the end, the Iraqi parliament that results from yesterday's vote will be illegitimate, having been elected under the guns of U.S. soldiers. The triumphalism of the Bush administration aside, the new Iraqi regime will have no more credibility than the Iraqi Governing Council, set up by the United States in 2003, or the ersatz government of Prime Minister Allawi, appointed in 2004.
My favorite quote from today’s coverage of the election comes from the Post . It’s the story of a U.S. Army company in Mosul, in a Sunni area where no one bothered to vote:
Instead of protecting voters on the periphery of the polling sites, as occurred in most areas, the company’s platoons spent much of the day on raids in which they would burst into homes in search of insurgents, only to wind up urging the occupants to vote.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is working hard to push Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda man in Iraq, out front as the spokesman for the resistance in Iraq. Nearly all intelligence analysts agree that he is a minor player, except for organizing the suicide bombs that kill people for no reason. The real resistance—the resistance that attacks the U.S. occupation forces with roadside bombs, mortars and organized, platoon-style actions—is made up of ex-Baath and Sunni forces, and they are likely to gain strength once the results of the election are known. It will be a victory for obscurantist Ayatollah Sistani and his pet mullah, Abdel Aziz Hakim, the cleric who headed Sistani’s election list. A Shiite fundamentalist majority in Iraq’s new parliament, with a counterpoint of independence-minded Kurds, is not likely to win favor among Iraq’s Sunnis.
The Post quotes James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and a poll analyst with Zogby International, to wit:
He compared Iraq’s election to the 1860 U.S. election, which paved the way for the Civil War after Abraham Lincoln won—and South Carolina seceded. “This election could exacerbate the divide,” Zogby said. “You can’t have 20 percent of the population feel disenfranchised.”
One other thing: To take the parallel further, Sistani is no Lincoln.
Monday 11:25 AM
