Iraqi Election

[redhead]

Lord yes. That's where I read it - one of Ungaro's posts.

The source is Bill Ungaro, who heard it on Havanah radio?

Thanks! I like to start the day with a dose of rich humor!

[NetGear]

Money is playing its part in the Kurdish election, local people say. Over the last week many Kurds told me they had been given money to vote either by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The two have a common slate for elections to the 275-member national assembly, but are contesting against one another in simultaneous elections for the regional council.

The amount offered was usually around 60,000 Iraqi dinars (40 dollars), they said. Retired people queued up at the offices of both parties to claim special pension bonuses in the days before the election. SOURCE

As usual, Bill Ungaro enjoys exaggerating the situation, but we all have ceased being surprised.

This was a very regional effort, much like this country's DNC has done, on occasion, with so-called voter drives. Some Kurds were targeted, but all Iraqis were not paid to vote. Freedom is the primary motivator.

[WBR]

This is not even close to what Ungaro claimed.

It does raise a question-
If the political parties are paying these people $40 for their vote, the parties have to have a way to know that they get what they paid for..
They have to know how the people cast their ballots.
It brings into question the legitimacy of the election.
I suspect we will hear more about this.

[B. Ungaro]

The $500.00 for voting station workers was all over the American News.
That by itself would not be outrages. Paying "Walking" money to the voters renders the whole thing a SCAM. The KURDS got paid, the Shia got paid, the Sunni did not get paid. Therefore, they did not vote.

I regret to say that neither the American Media, nor Havana Radio are totally objective about what happened in Iraq. I urge you to wait until the good old Conservative Rag, the ECONOMIST gives it a full going over. You can read it yourself Friday Morning. www.economist.com

[pbrauer]

IRAQ:
Some Just Voted for Food

Dahr Jamail

• BAGHDAD, Jan 31 (IPS) - Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations, several voters said after the Sunday poll.
  
  Many Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.
  
  ”I went to the voting centre and gave my name and district where I lived to a man,” said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad. ”This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration.”
  
  Mohammed Ra'ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital city reported a similar experience.
  
  Ra'ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. ”The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting,” he said. ”Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote.”
  
  ”Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote,” said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.
  
  There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations.
  
  Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.
  
  Their experiences on the day of polling have underscored many of their concerns about questionable methods used by the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government to increase voter turnout.
  
  Just days before the election, 52 year-old Amin Hajar who owns an auto garage in central Baghdad had said: ”I'll vote because I can't afford to have my food ration cut...if that happened, me and my family would starve to death.”
  
  Hajar told IPS that when he picked up his monthly food ration recently, he was forced to sign a form stating that he had picked up his voter registration. He had feared that the government would use this information to track those who did not vote.
  
  Calls to the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI) and to the Ministry of Trade, which is responsible for the distribution of the monthly food ration, were not returned.
  
  Other questions have arisen over methods to persuade people to vote. U.S. troops tried to coax voters in Ramadi, capital city of the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad to come out to vote, AP reported.
  
  IECI officials have meanwhile 'downgraded' their earlier estimate of voter turnout.
  
  IECI spokesman Farid Ayar had declared a 72 percent turnout earlier, a figure given also by the Bush Administration.
  
  But at a press conference Ayar backtracked on his earlier figure, saying the turnout would be nearer 60 percent of registered voters.
  
  The earlier figure of 72 percent, he said, was ”only guessing” and ”just an estimate” that had been based on ”very rough, word of mouth estimates gathered informally from the field.” He added that it will be some time before the IECI can issue accurate figures on the turnout.
  
  ”Percentages and numbers come only after counting and will be announced when it's over,” he said. ”It is too soon to say that those were the official numbers.”
  
  Where there was a large turnout, the motivation behind the voting and the processes both appeared questionable. The Kurds up north were voting for autonomy, if not independence. In the south and elsewhere Shias were competing with Kurds for a bigger say in the 275-member national assembly.
  
  In some places like Mosul the turnout was heavier than expected. But many of the voters came from outside, and identity checks on voters appeared lax. Others spoke of vote-buying bids.
  
  The Bush Administration has lauded the success of the Iraq election, but doubtful voting practices and claims about voter turnout are both mired in controversy.
  
  Election violence too was being seen differently across the political spectrum.
  
  More than 30 Iraqis, a U.S. soldier, and at least 10 British troops died Sunday. Hundreds of Iraqis were also wounded in attacks across Baghdad, in Baquba 50km northeast of the capital as well as in the northern cities Mosul and Kirkuk.
  
  The British troops were on board a C-130 transport plane that crashed near Balad city just northwest of Baghdad. The British military has yet to reveal the cause of the crash.
  
  Despite unprecedented security measures in which 300,000 U.S. and Iraqi security forces were brought in to curb the violence, nine suicide bombers and frequent mortar attacks took a heavy toll in the capital city, while strings of attacks were reported around the rest of the country.
  
  As U..S. President George W. Bush saw it, ”some Iraqis were killed while exercising their rights as citizens.”

[David]

Some Libs get it. Jeff Jarvis
The Eeyore Analysis of Iraq
SOURCE
: I'll be on MSNBC in the 5p hour with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who tries to wrap-up blogger reaction to the election from the antiwar camp (I won't call it the liberal side).

Problem is, there isn't much. Oliver did the Chicken Little dance yesterday but hasn't acknowledged the success today. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD argues that this opens the door to an Iranian-like rule of fundamentalists but doesn't say how he makes that prediction when the clerics decided to stay out of the Iraqi government and every poll makes it clear the people don't want that. Armando at Kos does the Eeyore thing (see also Juan Cole, below); Kos is still silent, as is Atrios.

Whether it's Kerry or any of these bloggers, it would be the grownup, mature, generous, humanistic, caring -- yes, dare I say, liberal -- thing to do to be glad that people who lived under tyranny are now giving birth to democracy.

Democracy isn't a right-or-left thing, folks. It's a right-and-left thing, remember?

: I think the press analysis of the election will acknowledge the good news. Jackie Spinner of the Washington Post -- eviscerated by Tim Blair the other day -- said without hesitation on MSNBC today that the story is the turnout. An LATimes reporter on the Friends of Democracy telecast is saying the same thing now. We'll see.

The Times reporter is asked by the FoD's host whether the coverage tomorrow will be "more happy" and she replies: "Well, I don't know about happy. But we all feel it was a profound moment, there's no question."

[B. Ungaro]

Pleeeease,

While the Bushies are banging their chest like gorillas, advertising themselves as the purveyors of Freedom and Democracy, everything about this WAR/INVASION has been ruled ILLEGAL.

The INVASION of Iraq is ILLEGAL according to the United Nations. The treatment of Prisoners has been ruled ILLEGAL by the American Courts.

This is just a continuation of a long record of Imperialistic Military Adventures that often turn out to be dissasters.

[David]

Here is Tom Friedman. A sober and Liberal op-ed columnist at the NY Times. He has some advice for the critics. Get with the program. NY Times

A Day to Remember
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
SOURCE
As someone who believed, hoped, worried, prayed, worried, hoped and prayed some more that Iraqis could one day pull off the election they did, I am unreservedly happy about the outcome - and you should be, too.

Why? Because what threatens America most from the Middle East are the pathologies of a region where there is too little freedom and too many young people who aren't able to achieve their full potential. The only way to cure these pathologies is with a war of ideas within the Arab-Muslim world so those with bad ideas can be defeated by those with progressive ones.

We can't fight that war. Only the Arab progressives can - only they can tell the suicide bombers that what they are doing is shameful to Islam and to Arabs. But we can collaborate with them to create a space in the heart of their world where decent people have a chance to fight this war - and that is what American and British soldiers have been doing in Iraq.

President Bush's basic gut instinct about the need to do this is exactly right. His thinking that this could be done on the cheap, though, with little postwar planning, was exactly wrong. Partly as a result, this great moment has already cost America over $100 billion and 10,000 killed and wounded.

That is not sustainable because the road ahead in Iraq is still long. We have to proceed with more wisdom and more allies. But proceed we must, and now we can at least do so with the certainty that partnering with the Iraqi people to build a decent consensual government is not crazy - it's really difficult, but not crazy.

But wait - not everyone is wearing a smiley face after the Iraqi elections, and that is good, considering who is unhappy. Let's start with the mullahs in Iran. Those who think that a Shiite-led government in Iraq is going to be the puppet of Iran's Shiite ayatollahs are so wrong. It is the ayatollahs in Iran who are terrified today. You see, the Iranian mullahs and their diplomats like to peddle the notion that they have their own form of democracy: "Islamic democracy." But this is a fraud, and the people who know best that it's a fraud are the ayatollahs and the Iranian people.

When any Iranian reform candidate who wants to run can be vetoed by unelected ayatollahs, and any Iranian newspaper can be shut by the same theocrats, that is not democracy. You can call that whatever you want, but not democracy. They don't allow bikinis at nudist colonies and they don't serve steak at vegetarian restaurants, and theocrats don't veto candidates in real democracies. The Iraqi Shiites just gave every Iranian Shiite next door a demonstration of what real "Islamic" democracy is: it's when Muslims vote for anyone they want. I just want to be around for Iran's next election, when the ayatollahs try to veto reform candidates and Iranian Shiites ask, Why can't we vote for anyone, like Iraqi Shiites did? Oh, boy, that's going to be pay-per-view.

Then there is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This Charles-Manson-with-a-turban who heads the insurgency in Iraq had a bad hair day on Sunday. I wonder whether anyone told him about the suicide bomber who managed to blow up only himself outside a Baghdad polling station and how Iraqi voters walked around his body, spitting on it as they went by. Zarqawi claims to be the leader of the Iraqi Vietcong - the authentic carrier of Iraqis' national aspirations and desire to liberate their country from "U.S. occupation." In truth, he is the leader of the Iraqi Khmer Rouge - a murderous death cult.

The election has exposed this. Because the Iraqi people have now made it clear that they are the authentic carriers of their national aspirations, and while, yes, they want an end to the U.S. presence, they want that end to happen in an orderly manner and in tandem with an Iraqi constitutional process.

In other words, this election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq war is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people. One hopes the French and Germans, whose newspapers often sound more like Al Jazeera than Al Jazeera, will wake up to this fact and throw their weight onto the right side of history.

It's about time, because whatever you thought about this war, it's not about Mr. Bush any more. It's about the aspirations of the Iraqi majority to build an alternative to Saddamism. By voting the way they did, in the face of real danger, Iraqis have earned the right to ask everyone now to put aside their squabbles and focus on what is no longer just a pipe dream but a real opportunity to implant decent, consensual government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.

[B. Ungaro]

Time will answer these kind of questions. The turnout for the election was not as large as was the turnout for the Elections in Vietnam in 1967.

The election will be off the TV Tubes as soon as the Kurds and the Shias and the Sunies break into their Civil War. It's coming. Leminate that.

[Orin]

I just love the Vietnam comparisons coming from folk that think apples are oranges. There was a viable opposition in Vietnam, i.e. the North Vietnamese. They had borders, they had numbers, they had a massive constituency. They had legitimacy of sorts.

Iraq? Where are the similarities. A handful of broken and scattered terrorists?

[B. Ungaro]

Orinsky,

You don't see the Forest from the Trees. Both in Vietnam and in Iraq the fight was between the various factions and against the INVADORS.

How is that for similarities?

You were not yet on the board when I TOLD the board that our militarys fight will not be against Saddams Military, but against the insurgents. I said this when the Bushies and the Simple Minded were beating their chest like Gorillas because after only one week of the war the Hummers were cruising on the main drag in Baghdad.

Iwas right about the insurgents and I am right about the pending civil war.

[Osiris]

The following comment is the exact type of bs that can get one killed.

Iraq? Where are the similarities. A handful of broken and scattered terrorists?

How many dead US troops are there now, over 1,300? How many dead Iraqi Guard and police and other security forces?

A handful huh? Maybe then you would like to volunteer to go to Iraq, and help clean up those few broken and scattered terrorists?

[joe]

How many dead US troops are there now, over 1,300?

Osi,
Is this the best you have? Have you ever wondered if it was worth it to them to help another person's freedom? How many people died for your freedom to write Leftist based posts?

[David]

Charles Krauthammer nails another. I love the title "Free To Dance." Wash Post
SOURCE
Free to Dance in Iraq

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A17

"At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh."

-- The New York Times, Feb. 2,

on the Iraqi elections.

Iraqis turned out to vote in great numbers, with great enthusiasm and determination. Surprise. The media have not been as surprised, noted a friend of mine, since the Nicaraguans turned out in their 1990 election to kick out the Sandinistas.

These two elections were 15 years apart, but the herd mentality of the liberal establishment never changes. They were shocked when those revolutionary darlings in Managua, magnet for long-haired Western "sandalistas" on revolutionary holiday, lost a free election -- to the candidate supported by the contras.

The liberal cliche of the time was that Third World people care more about food than about freedom. This kind of contempt for the political and spiritual dignity of people who live in different circumstances never goes away. It simply gets applied serially to different sets of patronized foreigners. Today we are assured with confidence that Arabs, consumed by tribe or religion or whatever, don't really care about freedom either.

On Jan. 30 millions of Iraqis said otherwise. They really do care about the right to speak freely and to vote secretly, the ordinary elements of democratic citizenship.

Why weren't Iraqis dancing in the streets on the day Saddam Hussein fell, critics have asked sneeringly. Some Iraqis, the young and more reckless, did dance. Others, I suspect, were too scared, waiting to see how things turned out. Would the United States leave them hanging as in 1991? Would it leave behind a "moderate" Baathist thug in its place?

Nearly 22 months later, Iraqis seemed convinced that there would indeed be a new day. And that is when the dancing started -- voters dancing and singing and celebrating, thrusting into the air their ink-stained fingers, symbol of their initiation into democracy. It was an undeniable, if delayed, feeling of liberation. Said one prominent Shiite spokesman: "We are celebrating the end of tyranny."

As if to make a point even more definitively, it was not the suicide bombers but the voters they killed at the polls who were buried as martyrs. The remains of one suicide bomber were spat upon. Another suicide bomber, reported Iraq's interior minister, was a child with Down syndrome. There are no words for the depths of such depravity, sending an innocent to murder innocents, dressing this poor child in explosives and then leading him to his slaughter.

These are the people whom Michael Moore, avatar of the Democratic left, calls the "Minutemen." These are the people who Ted Kennedy, spokesman for the Democratic left, says are in a battle with the United States for "the hearts and minds of the people."

This is both stupid and pernicious. The United States is trying to win hearts and minds; the insurgents are trying to destroy hearts and minds, along with the bodies that house them. They have no program. They have no ideology. They call themselves the "Party of Return." Their only platform is to return themselves to power to continue the rape, pillage, torture and murder of the past 30 years. That appeals to the minority of the minority that profited from these enterprises, and to nobody else.

Their foreign allies, the Zarqawi jihadists, do have a platform, which is to destroy and outlaw democracy as a form of apostasy. The Zarqawi persuasion was put to a test on election day. It lost.

Leading Democrats are discomfited by this demonstration of Iraqi support for the Bush Doctrine. John Kerry urges that we not "overhype this election." At the very moment when the first seed of democracy is planted, the Democratic leaders want the United States to turn its attention immediately to withdrawal. Kennedy demands a timetable. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid demand a definitive exit strategy.

This might be terrifying to Iraqis who just risked their lives to get democracy underway, and who still remember the Baathist slaughter of tens of thousands 14 years ago when the United States urged them to rise up against their oppressors and then abandoned them. But it will not be terrifying to Iraqis, because they know that this is a different time and a different Bush. He won't listen to the Saudis. He won't listen to the Democrats. If the world knows anything about George W. Bush, it is that he does what he says. Iraq's president called this talk about withdrawal "complete nonsense." Which is why the Iraqis could dance.

[Orin]

You don't see the Forest from the Trees. Both in Vietnam and in Iraq the fight was between the various factions and against the INVADORS.

No, Bill, you don't see the forest through the trees. The only similarity is that we were invaders. These two fights are very different tacticly and strategicly. Following your logic, Bill, a postman and a python are the same because they begin with 'p'.

And Osiris, I expect better of you. Your appeal to emotion here doesn't score a point. And following your Logic, Osiris, the Terrorists in Iraq must number close to the size of the force we faced in Vietnam because a handful of terrorists couldn't kill 1,300 in two years? 19 terrorists killed nigh on 3,000 on September 11.

Didn't little old Vietnam have the Foureth largest army in the world not too long back?

A handful huh? Maybe then you would like to volunteer to go to Iraq, and help clean up those few broken and scattered terrorists?

I've already done my share of cleaning up. I have seen more death and destruction than you've seen on television. Your Ad Hom attack was totally uncalled for.

[Osiris]

Osi,
Is this the best you have? Have you ever wondered if it was worth it to them to help another person's freedom? How many people died for your freedom to write Leftist based posts?

Joe, you really have a knack for missing the center every single time don't you?

My comment was directed at this phrase posted by Orin...Iraq? Where are the similarities. A handful of broken and scattered terrorists? Now why don't you either read the entire posting, and THINK about it some more, and then tell me again that my post was ONLY about those 1,300+ killed in this war, and leftist based.

[Osiris]

Osiris, the Terrorists in Iraq must number close to the size of the force we faced in Vietnam because a handful of terrorists couldn't kill 1,300 in two years?

Doesn't seem to make much sense in that statement.

These were your words as posted earlier on this page...

Iraq? Where are the similarities. A handful of broken and scattered terrorists?

I've already done my share of cleaning up. I have seen more death and destruction than you've seen on television. Your Ad Hom attack was totally uncalled for.

Making assumptions again Orin? I was in Nam, and not on TV, nor watching it either.

[rachel]

Iraq is not Vietnam
Congressman Steve Pearce (back to web version) | Send


February 5, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3- Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy recently said about America's presence in Iraq, "The U.S. Military Presence Has Become Part of the Problem, Not Part of the Solution." Last year, Kennedy said Iraq will become President George Bush's "Vietnam."

Vietnam is a bad analogy. The Vietnam War was in essence a proxy war between the United States and the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The Vietcong guerrillas received regular supplies of munitions and troops from the Soviets as well as China, while South Vietnam was fully backed by the United States and our allies that included Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.

Unlike the decade-long Vietnam War, the present fighting is the chaotic aftermath of a three-week victory that toppled Saddam's ruling government. Iraq is not a divided country, but rather contains pockets of diehards surrounded by unsympathetic Kurds and Shiites, who, for the most part, support the U.S. effort to subdue the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime. The enemy relies on a finite supply of stockpiled weaponry and cash, not daily infusions through a port like Haiphong or a steady stream of trucks rolling in supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

North Vietnamese Dictator Ho Chi Minh was a killer with the blood of thousands on his hands from his brutal collectivization programs. But he still managed to come across as a romantic, grandfatherly figure appealing to many naïve people all over the world. Saddam Hussein, in contrast, was hated at home and abroad.

The Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army had relatively safe havens in Laos and Cambodia. Saddam Hussein had no safe havens and was captured by American forces while hiding in a hole in the ground shortly before Christmas Day in 2003. His loyalists have no safe havens and are constantly on the run.

As a Vietnam veteran, I realize that the Vietnam War still scars the American societal fabric. It is a sad, painful page in American history. It has cast doubts on presidential judgments in committing troops to fight for the cause of freedom and our government's decisions in foreign policy.

The Vietnam War failed because presidents failed to make the case for war. That is an important lesson to be learned, and hopefully President Bush will be careful to never let the American people lose sight of the reason for the war in Iraq.

America's longest war taught us another fact: Wars should be fought by military commanders in the battlefield and not from the White House and Congressional lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

This war is different because President Bush has shown leadership in allowing the military commanders to handle the fighting and achieving the battlefield objectives in Iraq in order for America to remain secure. A majority of Democratic Senators, including John Kerry and John Edwards, voted for the resolution authorizing the President to use force against Iraq.


President Bush had another Congressional mandate. Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, calling for the removal of Saddam's regime. The Senate passed it unanimously, the House approved it on a 360-38 vote and President Clinton signed it into law on October 31, 1998.

By quickly driving to Baghdad, U.S. commanders avoided unnecessary battles with Iraqi army regulars who surrendered shortly after Saddam's government fell. After its fall, whole divisions of the Iraqi army lost their will to fight and their ability to communicate.

A prolonged campaign to destroy all of Iraq's armed forces before taking Baghdad would have meant more coalition and civilian casualties, more destruction to Iraq's infrastructure, and higher construction costs.

The world is a safer place because we acted. I regret the huge loss of life. But Iraq is no longer a rogue nation, supporting terrorism and weapons proliferation.

We achieved a miraculous victory in Iraq by overthrowing Saddam. We created a consensual Iraqi government after 30 years of chaos. Free elections have been held. The American success in Iraq is nearly unprecedented in the recent history of the Middle East.

Iraq is not Vietnam.

Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a supporter of cowardly terrorists (Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal) figurative brothers of those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, murdering 3,000 innocent people. President Bush has made our message clear to terrorists around the world that the United States will not relent in the war on terrorism, and will continue to fight cell by cell until the war against terrorism is won.

Like I said in a speech before the New Mexico State Legislature recently, terrorists don't intend to win militarily; they intend to destabilize the world economically and politically. In an unstable climate, they will do anything to gain power.

We will not rest until these terrorists are brought to justice. They have no regard for human life and human dignity. They should not be allowed another minute of freedom in any part of the world. We still have a long way to go. But with the strength and resolve of the American people behind our Armed Forces and with God's help, we shall not fail.

Congressman Steve Pearce represents the Second Congressional District of New Mexico.



©2005 Congressman Steve Pearce


townhall.com

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[David]

PIGS FLY!!!!!!
NY Times does favorable story about Iraq and our presence. NY Times

Suddenly, It's 'America Who?'
New York Times ^ | 2/6/05 | Dexter Filkins
SOURE

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Through 22 months of occupation and war here, the word "America" was usually the first word to pass through the lips of an Iraqi with a gripe.

Why can't the Americans produce enough electricity? Why can't the Americans guarantee security? Why can't the Americans find my stolen car?

Last week, as the euphoria of nationwide elections washed over this country, a remarkable thing happened: Iraqis, by and large, stopped talking about the Americans.

With the ballots still being counted here, the Iraqi candidates retired to the back rooms to cut political deals, leaving the Americans, for the first time, standing outside. In Baghdad's tea shops and on its street corners, the talk turned to which of those candidates might form the new government, to their schemes and stratagems, and to Iraqi problems and Iraqi solutions.

And for the United States, the assessments turned unfamiliarly measured.

"We have no electricity here, no water and there's no gasoline in the pumps," said Salim Mohammed Ali, a tire repairman who voted in last Sunday's election. "Who do I blame? The Iraqi government, of course. They can't do anything."

Asked about the American military presence here, Mr. Ali chose his words carefully.

"I think the Americans should stay here until our security forces are able to do the jobs themselves," Mr. Ali said, echoing virtually every senior American officer in Iraq. "We Iraqis have our own government now, and we can invite the Americans to stay."

The Iraqi focus on its own democracy, and the new view of the United States, surfaced in dozens of interviews with Iraqis since last Sunday's election. It is unclear, of course, how widespread the trend is; whole communities, like the Sunni Arabs, remain almost implacably opposed to the presence of American forces. But by many accounts, the elections last week altered Iraqis' relationship with the United States more than any single event since the invasion.

Since April 9, 2003, when Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, Iraqis have viewed themselves more or less as American subjects. American officials ran their government, American soldiers fought their war, American money paid to rebuild Iraq.

Indeed, the American project to implant democracy in Iraq often seemed to be in danger of falling victim to the country's manifest political passivity, born of a quarter-century of torture centers, mass graves, free food and pennies-a-gallon gasoline. The more the Americans tried to nudge the Iraqis towards self-government, the more the Iraqis expected the Americans to do.

As the insurgents wreaked more and more havoc, and sabotaged more and more of the country's power supply, the Iraqis, not surprisingly, blamed the people in charge. Day by day, many Iraqis' gratitude for the toppling of Saddam Hussein seemed to harden into bitterness and contempt.

After June 28, when American suzerainty here formally ended, not many Iraqis bought the notion that the interim government of Ayad Allawi was anything other than a caretaker regime, hand-picked by the Americans and the United Nations.

All that seemed to change last Sunday, when millions of Iraqis streamed to the polls. Few if any Iraqis had ever voted in anything approaching a free election, yet most seemed to know exactly what the exercise was about: selecting their own representatives to lead their own country.

"Our dilemma is solved," said Rashid Majid, 80, who wore his best jacket to the polls. "We will follow our new leaders, because we have chosen them."

Some Iraqis saw in the election their own liberation, one that many did not feel on April 9, 2003. Mr. Hussein's regime was not toppled by Iraqis but by the American military, a fact that has lingered in Iraqi minds.

Yet after casting ballots in a free election, conducted by more than 100,000 Iraqi poll workers, many Iraqis said they finally felt free - not only from the terrors of the old regime, but also from acute feelings of humiliation about the American occupation.

"The election was a victory of our own making," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser. "The Iraqi people voted with their own blood."

The newfound self-respect that Mr. Rubaie believes the election conferred on ordinary Iraqis seems to have had an immediate impact on their view of the United States. Suddenly empowered with the vote, Iraqis no longer seem to view America as all-powerful, or themselves as unable to affect events. A result has been a suddenly more accepting view of the United States.

The realism among Iraqis was evident on election day itself. Amid the euphoria of voting, America, which had almost always been the first topic of conversation, was suddenly evanescent, unmentioned in a score of interviews unless a reporter raised it first. And when Iraqis did talk of America, it was with a reasonableness and patience that had seemed missing, a willingness to balance good with bad, to give credit where it is due.

This transition seemed all the more striking for the fact that Apache helicopters roared over the polling centers every few minutes with American troops manning checkpoints only a few blocks away.

Hachim Shahir, an 83-year-old bricklayer standing in line for hours to vote, was asked how it had been possible for somebody like him to arrive at such a late stage in life without ever having voted, and now finally to have cast a ballot. He thought for a long while, then answered: "America - it was America that did it."

And how did he feel about that?

"America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home," Mr. Shahir said. "The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it."

The new mood appears to have continued since election day. The calls by candidates for a timetable for American military withdrawal have died away. Even a group of Sunni politicians decided last week that they would take part in the drafting of Iraq's new constitution without insisting on a timetable.

Getting Iraqis to take charge of their own affairs, whether by fighting insurgents or taking over government ministries, has been the goal of American leaders here since the fall of Saddam Hussein. After 22 months of trying to persuade the Iraqis to stand on their own, while doing everything for them, the Americans may be finding that Iraqis, now fully sovereign, don't want them to go home so soon after all.

[David]

More North American Leftists pulling for US Defeat in Iraq. Detroit Metropress
SOURCE
Why We Must Lose This War

Gwynne Dyer isn’t exactly a wimp. Not many guys from Newfoundland are. Born during World War II, he has been fascinated by things military all his life, and has served in three navies — ours, Canada’s and Great Britain’s. He has university degrees from all three countries too, and a Ph.D. in military and Middle Eastern history. During the 1980s, he produced and narrated the best documentary series about the nature of war that I’ve ever seen.

And hereÂ’s what he says about what we are doing:

“The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq. What is at stake now is the way we run the world for the next generation or more, and really bad things will happen if we get it wrong.”
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Those are the opening lines of his latest and perhaps most important book, Future Tense: The Coming World Order (paperback, McClelland and Stewart, $12.95). If you plan on reading only one book this year, make this the one. In perfectly clear prose, with arguments as well-researched as they are compelling, this military expert explains why what weÂ’re doing is mad.

He explains how we haven’t grasped that the world has changed, that we aren’t living in our old superpower world anymore, one in which we’re the leader of the forces of light against the evil dark powers of communism. Nor are we, in fact, even a military superpower in the way we like to think we are; in reality, our military machine can only be used against very weak countries. As he notes, “War with a serious opponent would lead to a level of American casualties that the U.S. public would not tolerate for long.”

What the world needs most in the long run (if there’s to be a long run), he reminds us, is a stable international order in which all nations gradually work on abandoning war as an acceptable way of settling any differences. Dyer isn’t starry-eyed about this; he thinks it will take a hundred years at least to get major countries to stop resorting to war, “for it is trying to change international habits that had at least 5,000 years to take root.”

That, he reminds us, is the whole purpose of the United Nations, which we played the major role in starting exactly 60 years ago this spring. Yes, weÂ’ve resorted to war before, as have other countries, but we always at least pretended that what we were doing was legally justified by international standards.

Now, however, the current administration is essentially spitting on this, and openly proclaiming our right to intervene unilaterally anywhere we want. Why is that so bad? Because others will do it too, and, eventually, it will break down even the ideal of an international order, causing a general return to “the old world of alliances, arms races and all the other old baggage.”

Dyer writes, “No other major power wants to abandon the project to outlaw war … but if the world’s greatest power becomes a rogue state, they won’t have much choice.” Some days, it appears we’ve already crossed the line.

Interestingly, if that happens, we may not be able to afford to be a rogue state for very long. In what’s surely the most telling and terrifying part of this book, the author takes on the most frightening topic of all — the real condition of the American economy, which is now totally dependent on foreign investment.

You’d scarcely know it from the “mainstream media,” but we’re now the biggest debtor nation in history, owing far more to foreign countries than they do to us, and running up $500 billion more on our “credit card” every year.

Why does this go on? Dyer argues what other economists have told me in whispers: “The U.S. economy is a confidence trick based on everybody else’s perception that the United States is centrally important for the world’s security and that its economy is centrally important for the world economy.”

That was absolutely true in 1945, and largely true even in 1985. But not anymore. If you look at only those foreign investments that could be liquidated fairly quickly, the total, he estimates, would come to about $8 trillion. If those investments started to move elsewhere, the value of the dollar could be cut in half, Dyer estimates, overnight.

That would mean not only no more Lincoln Navigators, it more than likely would lead to the end of democracy as we know it. Which would be especially unfortunate since, as he notes, “global warming and other environmental problems are going to hit us very hard over the next 50 years.”

“How fast they hit and how great the resulting upheavals will be cannot be known in advance, but very few people apart from the usual suspects in the United States any longer doubt that climate change is a reality.”

Incidentally, if you’re tempted to tell me why Gwynne Dyer is all wrong, I’ll be willing to listen — but not if you haven’t read this book first.