Election Thoughts
I keep wanting to say more about the Iraqi elections, but I’m having trouble connecting all the random comments and questions in my head into some cohesive point. Instead, I’m just gonna throw it all out there and open this up to discussion :
I’m very impressed with the high turnout. Millions of Iraqis literally risked their lives to vote when most Americans can barely stand to risk their lunch breaks to do the same. Iraqi turnout is estimated to be between 60% -75%. By comparison, the turnout in November’s election, which was the highest turnout since 1968, was a dismal 60.7%. Perhaps one day the Iraqi people will be free enough to take their liberty for granted. Let’s hope the Iraqis are happy when they actually find out who they voted for. And that their anonymous representatives pick a decent candidate to be prime minister. Now would probably be a good time to educate people on the differences between a “democracy” and a “republic”. As I mentioned in my last post, this election is just the latest in a seemingly neverending series of goalposts for the Iraqi war. Whenever violence flares up, it always seems that the tipping point is only one event away. Based on the last part of this article, my guess is that the next few events will be the selection of the Prime Minister, the drafting of the constitution, and the next round of elections at the end of the year. Every time there’s another violent attack, we’ll be reminded of these plans with an plea for the kind of patience that our leaders lacked in early 2003. The one thing I can be certain of in regards to the Iraqi election is that the first fiteen minutes of this Wednesday’s State of the Union address will be unbearable crap. Bush’s speech will be full of flowery statements like “The transformative power of liberty is the Almighty’s gift to every man.” Ugghh…
Since the elections are essentially a redo of last June’s spontaneous handover, lemme just repeat what I said then :
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in a few weeks. If our guys are still dying over there, will Americans really be willing to accept the “don’t blame me, they’re sovereign” excuse?
Based on who’s still President, the answer seems to be “yes”.
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Regarding the Prez’s “liberty is the almighty’s gift,” I’ve been having my own little jumble of thoughts. I’ve connected before how I think the Republicans are unified only by a fundamentalist mindset– the same way some Republicans are fundamentalist about the bible, others are about the Constitution. It’s a shared mindset. When it comes to liberty being the almighty’s gift and it being our duty to spread it… that seems to be the President’s way of binding the evangelical mindset (they see it as their duty to preach the good news to the unenlightened) to the Republican political agenda. It’s pretty clever when you think about it. As plenty of people have pointed out, the two major factions of the Republican party shouldn’t have much in common, but fusing the way the two see our nation and the world is a way of keeping the two sides bound together. The left could use some similar kind of fusion.
Comment by E-Rock — January 31, 2005 @ 11:53 am
We’ll be over there for years, I think. Unless we’re seeing 50 people die everyday, or perhaps more. The danger of withdrawing (not to you and me, but to America’s imperial projects abroad) is too great. Which is one of the reasons I was against it in the first place. We are stuck there for the foreseeable future.
Comment by Joe — January 31, 2005 @ 12:19 pm
Yeah, but does he mean it? He had lots of great things to say about the spreading of freedom and democracy in his inaugural speech, but once people started to ask the hard questions, his people said that we shouldn’t take the ideas that he offered too seriously. Hey, as long as it sounds good, who gives a shit, right?
I agree. I think the Democratic message is 1000% more “moral” than the “do as I say, not as I do” bullshit coming out of the GOP. At this point, the real struggle is to explain that to the American people.
Comment by greg — January 31, 2005 @ 12:52 pm