Open Iraqi election thread

[Berzerker]

I suppose also that you were in favor of the South seceding in 1861 for the same reason?

OOooo!

Let's be honest here: The South seceded because they wanted their ****ign slaves Ned.

What the Sunni supporters of Saddam did to the Kurds and Shi'ites was worse, thats why they're resisting.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Jaakko


Sorry, if I took you out of context then by all means show me and explain.



What does this have to do with the fact, the fact you now seem to understand (sort of anyway), that the Iraqis weren't having elections under Saddam? You said Iraqi success would occur inspite of the US and I asked you about the lack of past success of Iraqis before the US went in. You're calling the catalyst of the current success a greater impediment to democracy than the Iraqis who would still be under Saddam if not for the US.

I'm just saying that removing Saddam in itself doesn't make the Iraqis succeed, nor does it make the US their friend or willing helper. Those have to be determined by the actions of the US after they took out Saddam, and their track record doesn't make the US come out looking very good (failed reconstruction, looming civil war, even the elections came to be because of Iraqi pressure). To use an extreme example of what I'm driving at, consider East Germany. The Soviets did take out Hitler, but does that mean we should celebrate their occupation of East Germany as the catalyst of East-German post-Hitler success?

Edit: also, I'm not saying the Iraqis are worse off now than under Saddam, I'm saying that the US is a lesser negative force. Please make that distinction in the future.

Edit2: regarding context, I was referring to the discussion as a whole. If we go to dissecting, I myself lose track and get stuck to bits of sentences instead of the whole thing, which isn't good.

[Dinner]

It is a complete lie to claim that the US wasn't going to have elections at any point in Iraq. The US has always had the intentions of holding elections as soon as it was feasable though the exact day was never nailed down. It's clear that Bush & Co were nervous about the elections being a failure so they wanted to delay until the country was as stable as possible but that is a very different thing from saying the US didn't want elections.

That Jaakko my lad means you have a basic fact wrong dispite what people like Juan Cole claim. Also I wouldn't call reconstruction a failure by any stretch of the imagination since more Iraqis have electricity and clean drinking water then at any point in history plus most roads have been repaved and several new ones built. Clearly, the Iraqi people had high expectations (I'd say unreasonably high) that the US was going to turn Iraq into a 1st world country like Germany, Japan, or Korea. If that's the bar then the US didn't even attempt to jump it; reconstruction wise the infastructure is better then before the 1991 war and much better then the 2003 war.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Oerdin
It is a complete lie to claim that the US wasn't going to have elections at any point in Iraq. The US has always had the intentions of holding elections as soon as it was feasable though the exact day was never nailed down. It's clear that Bush & Co were nervous about the elections being a failure so they wanted to delay until the country was as stable as possible but that is a very different thing from saying the US didn't want elections.

That Jaakko my lad means you have a basic fact wrong dispite what people like Juan Cole claim. Also I wouldn't call reconstruction a failure by any stretch of the imagination since more Iraqis have electricity and clean drinking water then at any point in history plus most roads have been repaved and several new ones built. Clearly, the Iraqi people had high expectations (I'd say unreasonably high) that the US was going to turn Iraq into a 1st world country like Germany, Japan, or Korea. If that's the bar then the US didn't even attempt to jump it; reconstruction wise the infastructure is better then before the 1991 war and much better then the 2003 war.

The US would've had elections when Iraq was "ready", which is to say never, considering the rate the Bush admin has been and is screwing up. They would've propped up some friendly strongman and gotten the hell out of dodge afterwards, if the Rumsfeld doctrine had been applied to the full.

For the peachiness in Iraq, cite? As far as I can see, there are still a whole lot of blackouts and fuel shortages in Iraq, and the economy remains firmly in the crapper, because nobody in their right mind wants to invest in such a high-risk place (I'm not even going to go into the US cronyism, bureaucracy and hostility towards potential investors).

Edit: let's not forget the unemployment, 30-60 percent depending on who you ask.

[Ramo]

Cole said they were suspicious cause theyre blog was on a server in Texas. Cole didnt bother to check why they were using that server, or to inform himself that many Iraqi bloggers use out of country servers.

One expects higher standards from a University of Michigan Mid East Studies prof, especially one so widely quoted as Cole, than one does from a 'poly poster, even one so compelling as Oerdin. He didnt use the word CIA, but simply questioned where they get their support from, in words that implied CIA. Standard fare from the likes of Cole.

Its hardly surprising that Cole is feeling down today.

Hold up, calling someone on the internet a troll is equivalent to saying they are CIA? Whaaa....? That'd make half of Poly CIA agents.

Maybe he should've looked more into the server situation before writing about it, but this ain't investigative journalism about real politics, it's his personal thoughts regarding the credibility of a blogger. Frankly, all I can get out of the situation is a big "meh."

So where the hell were the insurgents? We have been told that the battle of Fallujah was only a tactical victory for the coalition, if that. We've been told that the arrests of various Zarqawi lieutenants is unimportant, indeed that the arrest or death of ANY insurgents is unimportant, as they can always recruit more, and there numbers are swelling. Coalition intel work is failing, and the iraqi forces are worthless, except for a handful of overstretched Kurds.

Yet on the day that the insurgency had publicly stated it HAD to disrupt, they achieved little more than they have on numerous days in the last few weeks. A total of 44 Iraqis killed, apparently including the suiciders themselves. NO succesful attacks outside the Sunni triangle.

So what happened?
A. They never planned to target the election, that was a bluff.
B. Theyre quite strong, but targeting a particular event is beyond them - they can hit only targets of opportunity.
C. Efforts by coalition and Iraqi forces were too strong
D. The insurgency IS fading.
E. A little of each of the above

For a guerilla outfit, targets that are heavily defended are bad targets. Of course they were never going to throw everything they had against the voting machines, I could've told you that. Because, for no other reason, more violence would've been pointless in terms of enforcing the Sunni Arab boycott:

"Nobody came. People were too afraid," said Madafar Zeki, in charge of a polling centre in Samarra, in the Sunni heartland, where the insurgency has been bloodiest.

According to preliminary figures provided by a joint U.S. and Iraqi taskforce who safeguarded Sunday's vote, fewer than 1,400 people cast ballots in the city of 200,000.

The figure includes votes from soldiers and police, most of whom were recruited from the Shi'ite south.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=663751

david adesnik of oxblog on Coles recent post:

"The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic.

Yes, I'd say so. Or are you saying that Khatami and the Reformists gained power partially due to problems in the electoral process?

Maybe if I said stuff like that I could get a job in the history department at the University of Michigan. Oh, and here's another bit of Ann Arbor scholarship, taken from the same post:

If it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi.

Well, maybe under President Rumsfeld."

I'm not sure what the distinction is, in April, 2003.

[Berzerker]

Jaakko

I'm just saying that removing Saddam in itself doesn't make the Iraqis succeed, nor does it make the US their friend or willing helper. Those have to be determined by the actions of the US after they took out Saddam, and their track record doesn't make the US come out looking very good (failed reconstruction, looming civil war, even the elections came to be because of Iraqi pressure).

They had elections in Iraq yesterday because the US removed Saddam, not the Iraqis. So why is the US a greater impediment to democracy than the Iraqis themselves who could not bring about that change?

To use an extreme example of what I'm driving at, consider East Germany. The Soviets did take out Hitler, but does that mean we should celebrate their occupation of East Germany as the catalyst of East-German post-Hitler success?

If thats an extreme example and Iraq is not, why offer it? The USSR didn't let E Germany elect people in a democracy.

Edit: also, I'm not saying the Iraqis are worse off now than under Saddam, I'm saying that the US is a lesser negative force. Please make that distinction in the future.

We aren't debating "worse off", you said Iraqi success will be inspite of the US and you called the US an impediment which presumes the Iraqis are not an impediment or at least a lesser one. This is pretty simple, the elections they just had are a result of the US shedding blood and treasure - GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE!

Edit2: regarding context, I was referring to the discussion as a whole. If we go to dissecting, I myself lose track and get stuck to bits of sentences instead of the whole thing, which isn't good.

I find debates easier to follow when people use quotes and respond fully, but I didn't criticise you for liking another way.

[DanS]

The US would've had elections when Iraq was "ready", which is to say never, considering the rate the Bush admin has been and is screwing up. They would've propped up some friendly strongman and gotten the hell out of dodge afterwards, if the Rumsfeld doctrine had been applied to the full.

We can all create hypotheticals like you are doing, but Bush has been excedingly clear about his desire to have elections as soon as practical. It's disingenuous to try to spin a long-distance silent backscratching between Bush and Sistani into a big disagreement on the merits of a vote. Indeed, we crossed most of our allies in the region, who were pressuring Bush to delay or scrap the vote because they want to keep the Shiites down and their own power untouched by the ballot box.

[Berzerker]

The US would've had elections when Iraq was "ready", which is to say never, considering the rate the Bush admin has been and is screwing up.

Iraq just had its election, does reality conflict with your prediction? Oh, Sistani wanted it? He talked the neo-cons out of their big game plan for the world? Or he advised the Bu****es to have the election sooner than later even if it meant low Sunni turn out? Seems to me that might have been a mistake but I wouldn't turn that into some nefarious plan to run Iraq.

[Berzerker]

DanS beat me to it. Great minds think alike, great minds on medication just type slower.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Jaakko

They had elections in Iraq yesterday because the US removed Saddam, not the Iraqis. So why is the US a greater impediment to democracy than the Iraqis themselves who could not bring about that change?



If thats an extreme example and Iraq is not, why offer it? The USSR didn't let E Germany elect people in a democracy.



We aren't debating "worse off", you said Iraqi success will be inspite of the US and you called the US an impediment which presumes the Iraqis are not an impediment or at least a lesser one. This is pretty simple, the elections they just had are a result of the US shedding blood and treasure - GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE!



I find debates easier to follow when people use quotes and respond fully, but I didn't criticise you for liking another way.

So you're basically saying that the Iraqis weren't fit to govern themselves until the US came and showed them how. You're edging a bit too close to blaming the victim and some version of white man's burden here.

The thing is, once a dictatorship gets its oppression machine on the road, it's really hard to overthrow it from the inside, no matter who you are. The US invasion shattered it, yes, and it gave Iraqis the opportunity to start asserting themselves. However, it was an invasion executed under lies and false pretenses. I'm not going to give the Bush admin's motivations the benefit of doubt anymore.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DanS


We can all create hypotheticals like you are doing, but Bush has been excedingly clear about his desire to have elections as soon as practical. It's disingenuous to try to spin a long-distance silent backscratching between Bush and Sistani into a big disagreement on the merits of a vote. Indeed, we crossed most of our allies in the region, who were pressuring Bush to delay or scrap the vote because they want to keep the Shiites down and their own power untouched by the ballot box.

And that's because the US has never tried to install a puppet government in another country, right?

[DanS]

And that's because the US has never tried to install a puppet government in another country, right?

Are you ever going to present a coherent argument?

[Bosh]

david adesnik of oxblog on Coles recent post:

"The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic.

I'm sure they were, its just that they elected people who were pretty much powerless compared to the unelected Council of Guardians.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DanS




You're a waste of my time.

Uh huh. The fact of the matter is that the original US plan for Iraq had to be changed drastically when it became evident that reality wasn't what the Bush admin had hoped it would be. I attribute that change to the Iraqis, not the benevolence of the US.

You're a blue-eyed optimist, I'm the eternal cynic, but don't think you've got a special insight.

[Berzerker]

So you're basically saying that the Iraqis weren't fit to govern themselves until the US came and showed them how. You're edging a bit too close to blaming the victim and some version of white man's burden here.

Fit to govern is not the same as having the ability to overthrow Saddam, this election was a result of the US, the former remains to be seen. Therefore it is illogical to say the US is an impediment, or a greater impediment, to achieving democracy in Iraq when it is instrumental.

The thing is, once a dictatorship gets its oppression machine on the road, it's really hard to overthrow it from the inside, no matter who you are. The US invasion shattered it, yes, and it gave Iraqis the opportunity to start asserting themselves. However, it was an invasion executed under lies and false pretenses. I'm not going to give the Bush admin's motivations the benefit of doubt anymore.

All of which has nothing to do with what you said.