--- KJ <kjinkhoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> True, the Bushies may not have wanted the elections
> in the first
> place. But they have been nimble enough, with plenty
> of collaboration
> from the US and world media, to seize upon it and
> make virtue out of
> necessity -- and then when pressed to delay, to
> insist upon it, thus
> making it seem like theirs in the first place.
> Having played down
> what to expect, and given a bit of assist by
> Zarqawi, they then
> seized upon the turnout as vindication. We have to
> point to all the
> shortcomings, the if's and but's, that democracy is
> more than just
> elections, etc., but this is a losing proposition --
> as there's
> always the riposte that there wouldn't even be this
> flawed election
> but for the invasion, and it's not really viable to
> argue that no
> elections is better than even flawed elections with
> some modicum of
> procedural propriety. I don't think comparisons with
> 1967 Vietnam can
> really cut much ice now.
>
> Or, am I conceding too much?
Depends on what you are conceding.
If we felt up to it we could dig up all manner of elections held under the watchful eye of an invader, with no oversight, etc. Dahr Jamail, Robert Fisk and others have basically said, yeah, people there (like in the US) are expecting that this the first step in yankee-go-home.
If you mean how are antiwar types supposed to address the elections, sure, it's great propaganda for the warfans, but then so was the invasion, killing Saddam's sons, finding Saddam, the sovereignty handover, etc. I imagine large chunks of the US still thinks WMDs were found. Something like elections and the happytalk around them are going to be way too nuanced for most people to criticize. Now the insurgents are attacking out of "vengence":
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq>
and no doubt later they will "try to undermine the constitutional convention". By that time the elections will be that shining moment when everything turned around, like the invasion, killing Saddam's sons, finding Saddam, the sovereignty handover, etc., and remembered just as vividly.
Andy
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