Ace of Spades is hilarious on the dilemma the anti-war crowd faces today:
Liberal Legislators Seek “Timetable” For End to Discussion of Everything To Do With Iraq
W A S H I N G T O N (Acewire News Service) — Calling their previous pessimism and gloom on the prospects of free and fair Iraqi elections an “unending quagmire,” several leading Democrats called for an “exit strategy” for all discussion of the topic whatsoever….
[Aaron] Brown immediately held an envelope to his forehead and intoned “Me, Peter Jennings, and Katie Couric.” Tearing open the envelope and blowing into it, he read the contents of the card inside. “Name three people currently being watched by friends and family for signs of suicidal depression, and who have had their shoelaces, belts, and Percoset confiscated by mental-health care professionals.”
“It’s more true than funny,” he explained wryly.
Liberal bloggers instituted their own exit strategy unilaterally and by and large refused to mention January 30th’s historic events entirely. Joshua Micah Marshall could only offer a single line — “I question the timing” — although the January 30th vote has in fact been scheduled for six months.
Some anti-war bloggers have developed a quick case of amnesia regarding the turnout in the Iraq Election – see Notes in Samsara for one example.
UPDATE: Perhaps our amnesiacs are protecting their health from this:
Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: “I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.”
Gloat, gloat, gloat.
UPDATE: One enemy of Iraq’s liberation still refers to the Baathist/Al Qaeda terrorists operating in post-election Iraq as an “insurgency/partisan resistance” despite the fact that many of them, like Zarqawi, aren’t even Iraqi. Self-delusion is a more powerful force than gravity.
We don’t really know what the turnout is yet… is it 72%? 65%? 57%? I’ve seen varying reports.
Anyway, “amnesia” means ” total loss of memory, usually resulting from shock, psychological disturbance, brain injury, or illness.”
I’m just waiting for the news cycle to die down to find out better what’s going on. It’s called being prudent as opposed to shooting from the hip, and then looking like a jerk later…not that you ever did that…
BTW, I alluded to the election here.
Yes, you referred to the election before it happened and have been silent since then. I suppose you’re in the same fix as this guy: Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: “I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.”
I feel your suffering.
There’s really no need to comment on it. (I didn’t comment much on Condoleeza Rice or Gonzales either.)
We’ll see it sort out one way or the other. Or, as is most likely, it’ll be more of the same: a designated “Iraqi” government in which the US is this 800 lb gorilla that can’t get out of its way to fight an insurgency/partisan resistance.
Is it El Salvador? Sout Vietnam? Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait & see.
One enemy of Iraq?s liberation still refers to the Baathist/Al Qaeda terrorists operating in post-election Iraq as an ?insurgency/partisan resistance? despite the fact that many of them, like Zarqawi, aren?t even Iraqi…
Really? You took a poll of the guys fighting the Americans?
How’d ya do that?
Re: those “terrorists”.. .looks like CENTCOM differs with you.
CENTCOM estimates that 20% of the “resistance” fighters are non-Iraqi, like the Jordanian al Zarqawi. Let’s not confuse BBC with CENTCOM, OK?
While the fact that the elections even took place (and that it was “relatively” peaceful) certainly is a good news story from the region, it is still a little early to be gloating: one election does not a democracy make. All that has happened is that Iraqis have overwhelmingly expressed their “desire” to decide their own futures. Have they actually decided their own future? NO. The flaws in this election would make it illegitimate in almost any other place: candidates nominated by an occupying power, candidates names kept secret even during the voting, no campaigning other than by the candidates that have military escorts, confusing ballots that even politicians needed to be briefed on to know how to vote, etc.
The right, and Richard, among others, have latched onto the turnout rate as signifying that some miracle has happened. Well, if turnout is the only criteria, then Ukraine’s first vote should have been recognized (because there was a huge turnout), and Saddam’s own elections were smashing successes because 95%+ usually turned out to cast their ballots… The fact remains that democracy is not about whether you cast a ballot; it is about whether or not casting the ballot gives citizens any control over their destiny. While the former happened in Iraq, I doubt the latter really did.
Just as the left has downplayed the success that these elections represent, the right has ignored outright the flaws in the election, holding it up instead to be some historical achievement. That it is, but not in the same way the right claims. If I thought for a second that this whole “election” was not just another step in the US administration’s plan to remake Iraq in its own image, then I might consider these elections historic; If I thought that the US would genuinely let Iraqis draft their own constitution regardless of the outcome, then I might consider these elections historic; If I thought that Iraqis had actually influence on who will ultimately make decision about the nature of new Iraqi society, then I might consider this election historic. Regrettably, I doubt any of the above has happened, so I won’t be imploding any time soon with the revelation that somehow Bush got it right…
The candidates weren’t nominated by the US, Rob, they nominated themselves. And while the election was far from perfect – terrorists kept Sunni Arabs away from the polls, registration was questionable – it certainly compared well to the recent election in Washington State where the loser siezed power on the strength of ballots cast by dead people, felons, unregistered voters, and people who never existed.
Any time a people hold a real election for the first time in 50 years it’s a great thing, so I find your petty criticisms really sad and pathetic.
If the US can actually remake Iraq in our image rather than the image of a brutal fascist dictator, that would be a great thing.
Petty! It is hardly petty, Richard, to be more worried about the substance of democracy than its form. (Although being a supporter of the Republican Party, I guess form is all that matters to you). Nobody called the Ukrainians “petty” for demonstrating in the streets to reclaim a stolen election, because, Richard, the substance DOES matter!
In any event, in two of three paragraphs of my post, I gave the elections credit for being a significant event in the lives of Iraqis. But that significance does not take away from the terrible flaws in the whole Iraq government-making process in general and these elections in particular.
Moreover, my comment was not directed at minimizing the Iraqi election as much as it was directed at you for gloating about what you think it means. The pro-war camp’s use of the elections to whitewash the entire Iraq situation is a greater dishonesty than the flaws in the election itself.
The truth remains that the US administration is so desperate to put a positive gloss on its misadventure in Iraq that it – with the support of its minions in the blogosphere – has attempted to characterize this single event as justifying and vindicating everything about its Iraq policy – the intentions, the means, the lies and the missteps.
Revealing in your own token acceptance of flaws (i.e. Sunni turnout and registration) was its emphasis on the “elector” side of democracy, with complete disregard for the “elected” side of the democracy equation. Regardless of how many electors vote and how they registered, the most important element of democracy is that “electors” are informed about the issues and the candidates, and further that the “elected” have some accountability to the preferences of the electors (hence the importance of campaigns). None of these “elected” elements of this Iraqi election meet minimum standards of success
Of course, it is convenient for your purposes to downplay the importance of the nature of the “elected”, given that the elected in this case will simply ratify US designs on the region. BTW, the US have considerably more control over the candidates than your simple “they nominated themselves” reveals. The US may not have nominated the lists, but they certainly approved them.
So crow all you want about ‘casting ballots’, it doesn’t change the fact that Iraq is not a democracy yet, and the fundamental criticisms of the war remain intact.
The Iraqis held the first free and fair election in their history, Rob. Complaining that this election may have been less than perfect is petty to the max — it was infinitely better than any election preceding it, and a clear step in the right direction.
You sound bitter and defeated.
Complaining about the imperfections of the election, though maybe not excactly “petty”, gets us nowhere. Of course it was “a clear step in the right direction”.
But it WAS imperfect & should be clearly seen
as being an election held under occupation.
A fact not to be ignored.
Rob is spot on about the election being
used by media supporters (including bloggers) of the administration as a so-called “vindication” of flawed policy & side-stepping, or should I say shape-shifting.
Tally up all the things said since before the invasion–Eliot Weinberger has done this in his “What I Heard About Iraq”–& youll get a sour taste in your mouth.
Personally, I thought that piece of Weinberger’s was a childish whine. The significant issue is that the people of Iraq are free now, and Saddam isn’t.
No, Richard, not “bitter and defeated” (that sounds like more unwarranted gloating on your part), just clearly irritated that somebody (i.e. you) who claims to want democracy for the Iraqis dares to call concerns about the substance of democracy “petty”, because it serves your true ideological intentions. (Note once again that my first post was NOT a criticism of the flaws of the election – I acknowledged its significance – but it was a criticism of your unwarranted gloating about it).
I remain hopeful that Iraqis will get the freedom they deserve – and that you claim to want for them – yet I despair that the true US designs on the region will once again interfere with the self-determination of the Iraqis.
Ah yes, the US can’t possibly have liberated Iraq in the spirit of love and compassion because we’re such a wicked, hard-hearted, imperialist power, right?
It seems to me that Iraq’s self-interest happily aligns with US interests in their region: we want a stable, free, and just nation that won’t be a breeding ground or shelter for terrorists, and so do they; we want to buy lots of oil at a fair price, and they want to sell it.
What exactly is the rub?
And of course, Richard, your reference to the “first free and fair election” in their history is just another attempt to exaggerate the “gift” that America has given the Iraqis. In fact, Iraqis have had free and fair elections in the past, until western oil interests decided that the instability brought by the messiness of democracy was less interesting to them than the stability of dictatorships. The rest is history, until it was recently decided that dictators didn’t always play the way we wanted them to.
Define “free” for me, Richard, as it applies to a people. My main point – which you seem to conveniently ignore – is that if your ONLY criteria for freedom is the number of people who cast a ballot (regardless of the quality of the ballot), the Iraqis under Saddam were the “most free” people on the planet.
I am not saying that these elections were the same as those held under Saddam; I am saying that of you (and the Bush administration) want to substantiate a claim that Iraqis are now free, you are going to have to provide more evidence than how many people voted, and then simply declaring them “free”…
The rub, Richard, is that more than 100,00 innocent Iraqis have died in this war – not counting the hundreds of thousands dead during and since the Second Gulf War (Iran-Iraq was the first) – you want a stable source of oil. The claim about wanting a “stable, free, and just nation that won?t be a breeding ground or shelter for terrorists” is BS, simply a pretext for accomplishing the first objective. Iraq was never (at least not until now) a breeding ground for terrorists and it never threatened the US. That single glaring contradiction between the US claims and the effects of the US actions is what keeps most anti-war folks up in arms about this disaster.
Moreover, the US (the West) doesn’t simply want to “buy” lots of oil, it wants to “control” lots of oil – ensuring that no one else controls it – and have the maximum portion of the value of oil extraction go to US interests (hence US interests do not align with US interests). Iraqis will not be the prime beneficiaries of Iraqi oil wealth under a US puppet government: US oil companies and US consumers will be. And if it takes an Iraqi strongman to keep the legitimate demands of the Iraqi people for that wealth to be used for their own development, then we will see that happen, even if initially it requires this whole facade of “elections” and “freedom”.
Again, Richard, define freedom! What if Iraqis want to keep the oil industry nationalised? Are they free to do it? What if they want to keep a larger portion of the wealth to provide free health care? Will they be free to do it? What if they want to have free post-secondary education? Will the Iraqi governments US masters allow it?
I would say that Iraq likely would be able to do these things (depedning upon who ends up leading), but not because of the US “gift” of freedom, but despite it. And there is considerable efforts in the interim by the US authorities to ensure that they don’t (have this kind of freedom).
People are free when they can choose their form of government, Rob, so voting in a Saddam-style mock election doesn’t cut it. The Iraqi people voted for a list of delegates to a national assembly and constitutional convention of sorts, which makes them a free people in my book. They’re certainly more free than all of their neighbors with the possible exception of Israel, the only other Middle East country where Arabs can vote for the candidate of their choice.
Are they as free as Americans? Not yet, surely, but that’s largely a matter of subduing terrorists.
Yes, Rob, we Americans are so wicked, aren’t we?
Americans aren’t wicked, just ignorant and ill-informed when it comes to international affairs. The American financial interests that generally decide American foriegn policy aren’t wicked either, just self-interested. In countries with self-regulating, responsible governments, an educated and informed electorate keeps checks on destructive self interested parties running amuck. In America, destructive self-interested parties pull the wool over the electorate’s eyes…
Oh, the old False Consciousness riff. I remember that from the 60s. You should spend some time abroad if you think Americans are ignorant of world affairs, perhaps among some South Indian paddy workers. It will open your eyes for sure.
The piece by Weinberger wasn’t even his own words, Richard.
That’s what makes it indelible.
Calling it a childish whine sounds rather “defeated”.
Some of it was his own words, actually, and the rest was out-of-context quotations from various sources.
We all know war is hell, but oppression is worse. It’s too bad Weinberger doesn’t get that.
Oppression is not worse than war.
That’s sheer rhetoric.
And Weinberger’s own words were simply “I heard”. The substantive words of the piece were not his own.
Every one of these words is Weinie’s own, Kim: “I heard that on 17 September the president signed a document marked top secret that directed the Pentagon to begin planning for the invasion and that, some months later, he secretly and illegally diverted $700 million approved by Congress for operations in Afghanistan into preparing for the new battle front.”
The “secretly but illegally” part is a falsehood.
Give me a few months of war over a lifetime of oppression any time.
“Give me a few months of war over a lifetime of oppression any time”
Once again, Richard uses simple binary statements to misrepresent the opposition to the war, and to make his side seem more noble than it really is. Opponents of the war don’t say “give me a lifetime of oppression over a few months of war”. They say: “why go to war to stamp out oppression when other strategies can achieve the same objectives with a lot less destruction of human life”. No matter how many times you say the anti-Bush crowd is just “pro-tyranny”, it doesn’t make it true, Richard. One can be anti-tyranny and anti-war at the same time. It is a question of means, not ends.
As for “false consciousness”, I am not even suggesting that. I am referring to the entertainment-addicted American public being too preocupied with their sitcoms to care what the self-interested parties are doing abroad with US government resources.
The religious fanatic on one end of my street breaks into a rage at the mere mention of two men marrying each other, but yawns when reading that 100,000 ‘brown’ people have died for US interests; and the soccer mon at the other end of the street tears her hair out worrying about the implications of Brad and Jen’s split, but turns the channel when discussion comes on of Bush’s lies and of US oil companies getting lucrative contracts in Iraq.
So the Bush administration makes a deal with the fanatic – “you support my war and I’ll make sure you don’t have to see gays in churches” – and he ignores the soccer mom, because Hollywood will take care of her. The result: the administration gets away with murder abroad (literally) while the checks and balances of an informed electorate short circuit…
Rob, you’re not nearly as “well-informed” as you think you are, you’ve simply internalized some toxic opinions about hidden motives and secret agendas.
During the Cold War, self-hating Americans complained about our support for anti-Communist tyrants, and today they complain about our support for anti-fascist democratic movements.
We can just never be virtuous enough for some of our fellow citizens, so have to develop immunity to their picky complaints.
At the end of the day, your complaint about the hasty and unilateral liberation of Iraq comes down to haggling over the price. I don’t find that sort of thing terribly interesting. Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, and Bush carried it out. Most Americans supported this action because it’s the right thing to do, no matter who did it.
Why don’t you try and put down your mirror and try and see this as the Iraqis see it? After the celebrations Sunday, their perspective is pretty clear.