Bad day for pessimists!

The relative lack of violence and the 72% voter turnout in Iraq is a bad day for the pessimists and the "nattering nabobs of negativism."

A number of posters on this board repeatedly stated the Iraqi people did not want freedom and wanted the U.S. and its democratic ways out of the region.

Great day for Iraq--great day for democracy--great day for President George Walker Bush, the GREAT LIBERATOR!

 

A 72% turnover is way higher than the usual participation at elections in most democratic countries. This is indeed great news, and it will confer a greater legitimacy to the winner. I hope this also means the US can pull out asap. Let´s see if the new government is truly able to reconcile Islam and democracy.


What next? Iran?

 

By the way, and the Iraqi people have demonstrated t obe people of honor. Great job! I wonder how many Weterners would go to vote in these dangerous conditions. As I said, my admiration for them; they are so eager to embrace democracy.

 

This is the key and it will indeed be interesting.

 

Frankly, these elections surprised me. Day after day after day, the media have been running non-stop reports of attacks on US and allied troops. We got reports of Iraqi security forces behaving ineffectually, deserting or going over to the insurgents. The Iraqi provisional government seemed to hide behind American military protection. Iraq seemed to be a hell-hole.

So I figured that a real nationwide election would be impossible. I mean, if large parts of the country were no-go areas except to armored military sorties, how could polling places even be set up? If people got their throats cut for cooperating with the government, how many voters would dare to stick their fingers in the blue ink?

I figured that the insurgents probably represented a major segment of the population and those willing to vote might be lucky to hit ten or twenty percent, even in relatively secure areas where polling took place.

Well, all of that seems to have been wrong. The election took place. Polling places were set up and the great majority of them attracted voters. Lots of voters, in many places. People lined up to vote. They endured multiple security checkpoints. They shrugged off threats to their lives. And the TV showed them speaking with excited voices, dancing jubulently, or just voting with silent dignity. Families brought their children to see the historic day.

Not only that, but there's also the fact that the insurgents could do virtually nothing to stop it. There were attacks, some half a dozen suicide bombings and probably more shootings and stuff that we haven't heard about. But considering that there were some 5,000 polling places, less than 1% of them were hit. Probably 99% of the voting went off without serious incident.

It remains to be seen who the Iraqis ended up electing or what kind of new government forms. But whatever happens, Mr. and Mrs. Iraq, the "silent Iraqis", just sent the world a message, and they did so despite considerable threat and danger to themselves.

What did we learn?

We know that a larger proportion of the Iraqi people supports the idea of democracy than we might have thought just a few days ago. That doesn't mean that they all agree with one another on their politics. But they support the democratic framework in surprisingly large numbers.

We know that the insurgents are much more isolated than we thought a few days ago. Small bands of a few thousand fighters in a population of millions can create havoc when they hide among the civilian population, nobody knows who they are, and they enforce their will by terror and assassination. But today we know that they aren't the voice of the people. They don't speak for the people that they try to intimidate.

And we saw that the Iraqi authorities, backed up by US and allied forces, could plan and execute an election, including tremendous security, do it pretty much nationwide, and it worked surprisingly well. So the government doesn't just exist on paper, it isn't just a false front for occupiers.

I'm impressed. I really respect the courage of the Iraqi people. Not only did they speak, their voices resounding even before the votes are counted, they also reminded us who live in democratic countries how valuable popular soverignty is. We forget sometimes.

I still don't know how all of this is going to turn out, but I'm a lot more hopeful than I was yesterday. Now we know that democracy in Iraq has real and massive popular support.

 

And let's not forget to give a large amount of credit to George Bush who is proving himself to be quite the visionary.

BLD

 

The only real sad news is that people under threat of bodily harm, even death, still voted in droves. In our own nation, where voters are under no threat of bodily harm or death, we're lucky to get 50% to the polls.

 

I'm sorry, but I must have missed that. Could you please tell me who said that the Iraqi people did not want freedom?

Thank you.


Tom Nixon

 

The nattering nabob responds...

Well, let's put it this way - one election does not a democracy make, especially when there are 150,000 foreign troops in country to support and protect the process which is still OUR process, not theirs.

That being said, I'm also impressed that it went as well as it did, and a small part of me is optimistic that this will prove to be the start of something good (finally) out of the entire mess that is the US experience in Iraq.

 

I can only hope that the new Iraqi government doesn't follow the same course as the Iranian government. Theocracies are rarely truly democratic (or Republics) -

It sounds like a like of good people put their butts on the line and went out and voted. Just think - if that actually happened here in 2000 we probably wouldn't have chimp man in office today.

 

Re: Re: Bad day for pessimists!

Hi, Tom.

There have been so many political posts regarding Iraq that were made under various topics, I would have a hard time finding them. I will see if I can find them, however.

One post in particular said something to the effect people in that region do not want freedom. I am not sure, but I think it was Mr. Engineer. It may not have been, I don't remember, but I think it was.

 

I, too, am surprised and impressed.

 

Who said the Iraqi people don't want freedom? You've misconstrued people's objections to the war.

 

Re: Re: Bad day for pessimists!

No, no I didn't. There were a number of posts stating that people in this region have never had freedom and would not welcome it because they never had it. As I stated earlier, I will have to search for these posts when I have time. One can find them in a number of the political posts, especially those about President Bush.

 

Re: Re: Re: Bad day for pessimists!

Thanks, Jimmy. I'll be looking forward to seeing those posts. Don't know how I could have missed them (but I only occasionally read this forum).



Tom Nixon

 

I've made a sincere effort to avoid this discussion section, since I decided awhile ago that it was not appropriate for an Administrator to engage in heated political debates.

However, I have to say that I'm very impressed with the Iraq elections. Besides some token attacks, the terrorists didn't have the resources/manpower to launch a serious attack on the polls. That has to be good news.

Whatever you political affiliation, it had to be good to watch thousands of Iraqi women lining up to vote, this is the first time they have been allowed to cast a ballot.

Turnout was about 72%, much better than a US Presidential election, and we don't fear a mortar attack at our polling stations.

 

For me the most interesting thing would be to see how history judges G.W. Bush within 50-60 years. Politics, phobias and philias aside and after all the controversy that his decisions brought about in the entire world, last Sunday elections in Iraq were a major success for his cabinet. Will this be the beginning of the end for those dictatorships in the Arab world? If so, history will almost certainly find Bush´s policy on the Middle East to be correct, even intelligent. Of course, what happened last Sunday in Iraq is just a beginning, and it is an insignificant development but it may well mean the democratization of the area in the long term, especially if Iraq is successful in conciliating democracy and Islam (I was going to write "reconcile" but it is the wrong term as these two terms have never mixed well in the past) and in creating even a modest welfare state. Its example could be used as a model by other nations in the area, especially if the vast resources they possess are distributed more equitatively. Perhaps I am just daydreaming, and reality will again show itself in that crude way it usually does. But if Bush gets this done, his will definitely be remembered as a fruitful mandate.

 

People like Bill Dqayson and nosborne are surprised by Iraq's popular vote because we have a biased media.

If you had ferreted out the Iraqi polls on voting, you'd have found that they were even higher (70-85%), and that they've been high consistently through time. In other words, you should'nt be surprised - you're just too trusting.

The MSM simply rarely reported the relevant truth, and when they did - like in a story at the Wash Post, with a link I posted here - they buried this important news deep inside the paper.

LESSON? Don't trust the Fourth Estate!!!
QUESTION their AUTHORITY, too.

For real substance, see "Fourth Estate or Fifth Column" by Thomas Sowell (Jan 25, 2005). Sowell compares today's Iraq war reporting practices with WWII's.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050125.shtml

"oth military and civilian people returning from [Iraq] are increasingly expressing amazement at the difference between what they have seen with their own eyes and the far worse, one-sided picture that the media presents to the public here.

"[Today O]ur media cannot even call terrorists terrorists, but instead give these cutthroats the bland name, 'insurgents.' You might think that these were like the underground fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.

"The most obvious difference is that the underground in Europe did not go around targeting innocent civilians. As for the Nazis, they tried to deny the atrocities they committed. But today the 'insurgents' in Iraq are proud of their barbarism, videotape it, and publicize it_ -- often with the help of the Western media."

In fact many times our media publish staged photos and video of Iraqi resistance!
http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2005/01/very-special-effect.html
This is from Reuters, but AP and CNN have been guilty, too. Remember what famed reporter John Burns said in May 2003? Referring to CNN, he wrote in Editor and Publisher, "There is corruption in this [media] business." He echoed the thought in interviews as well.

Sowell continues: "The United States has voluntarily pulled out of conquered territory all around the world, including neighboring Kuwait during the first Gulf war. But the real goal of the guerrillas and terrorists is to prevent democracy from arising in the Middle East.

"Still, much of the Western media even cannot call a spade a spade. The Fourth Estate sometimes seems more like a Fifth Column."

-Orson

 

It will be really interesting to see how things develop in Iraq.

From my local newspaper today "Preliminary election return released on Thursday showed that 72% of the 1.6 million votes counted so far went to an alliance of Shiite parties dominated by groups with strong links to Iran, with only 18% going to Alawi, the interim prime minister and a secular Shiite, who favors strong ties to the USA."