[lbo-talk] Sistani, Elections, and Sectarianism (was Poll: They really don't want us there)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Wed Aug 30 09:31:55 PDT 2006


On 8/30/06, Seth Ackerman <sethackerman1 at verizon.net> wrote:
> I said Washington was forced to permit elections, which was a defeat for
> it. I didn't say it ushered in a glorious era for the Iraqi people. Your
> model of politics here seems to be a crude zero-sum game: When
> Washington loses, the people necessarily bask in triumphant victory and
> vice versa. That's not reality. In this case, Washington lost and Iraq
> became mired in horror.

If Washington had been forced to permit, say, a UN-supervised elections and referendum, with a guarantee that, upon the elections of a popular government, the foreign troops would leave within a specified period of time if that were the will of the Iraqi people expressed by the referendum, it would have been a defeat for it, but that's not the kind of elections that it permitted.

The kind of elections that Washington actually permitted were sectarian elections that would increase sectarianism, which was foreseeable IMHO and is precisely what happened. Losses are far larger for the Iraqis than the Americans, though, which is clear from who is dying. The Americans, in the end, can and will walk away from the hell it created, while Iraqis who do not have the means to emigrate -- poorer ones generally -- will have to live with it.


> > The United Iraqi Alliance is not a cohesive political party itself,
> > and it is a fragile alliance: e.g., between the January and December
> > 2005 elections, Moqtada al-Sadr's party chose to join the Alliance,
> > and the Iraqi National Congress and Iraqi Hezbollah left it to form
> > their own lists. It has no roots at all among Kurds and Sunnis, so,
> > when the Americans leave, it will probably just dissolve, its
> > constituents controlling their respective neighborhoods in
> > predominantly Shi'i areas, with Sunni and Kurdish militias controlling
> > theirs.
> >
> > The Iraqi people urgently need a national liberation front that is
> > made up of Shi'is, Sunnis, and Kurds, which the UIA isn't and which
> > can't come about through elections, which tend to divide rather than
> > unite. Only such a national liberation front that has legitimacy in
> > the eyes of all major constituencies in Iraq can credibly offer
> > amnesty to nationalist guerrillas and isolate and liquidate sectarian
> > terrorists.
> >
> > I hope that Tehran will come to understand that, rather than setting
> > store by the UIA as you seem to.
<snip>
>
> Your thoughts about elections vs. national liberation fronts are
> interesting: Elections divide, NLFs unite. I don't think so. The same
> forces that make elections divisive in Iraq -- i.e., each group's fear
> that the others will take power and exclude it -- apply even more to
> armed struggle.

I'm talking about the creation of a national liberation front as a political arm, which has to include Sunni and Shi'is who have already taken up arms, but does not solely consist of fighters, the kind of front in which women can participate, the kind of front that can wage mass struggles (largely) without arms, in the fashion that the Iranians forced out the Shah (in which armed struggles had very little -- virtually no -- role).


> You're always urging people to face the reality that people in the
> Mideast don't want democracy, so we should all "accept" that.

I've never said that people in the Middle East do not want democracy. The common sense in America has us conflate democracy with liberalism, but these are not the same thing, and the habit of conflation makes us fail to accept other peoples' democracy when they don't adopt liberalism as well as democracy. Therefore, it's crucial for us to develop a clear conceptual distinction between liberalism and democracy, so when we see illiberal democracy, we can see democracy, rather than merely lack of liberalism and pass if off as lack of democracy. (See the thread titled "Once upon a Time," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060821/thread.html#44427>, where I explain the distinction at length, plus my replies to Marvin in the thread on "Class Divide in Iran.")


>Well, if
> you're in such an accepting mood, you too need to accept a basic fact
> about Iraqi political life: Most Iraqis do not see American dominance as
> the worst possible scenario. They are even more afraid of what the other
> Iraqi groups might do than they are of American imperialism.
>
> ["The Americans aren't the problem; we're living under an occupation of
> Kurds and Shi'ites," Sattar Abdulhalik Adburahman, a Sunni leader from
> the northern city of Kirkuk, told a gathering of tribal leaders last
> week, to deafening applause. "It's time to fight back." - BG, 3/27/05].

No doubt some Sunnis would rather live with American imperialism than "an occupation of Kurds and Shi'ites," the preference that sectarian elections helped to create, and it shouldn't be hard to find several for quotations in articles.

The survey that Mihcael posted (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060821/044802.html>), which has led to this thread, however, suggests otherwise, if it is to be believed at all:

<blockquote>The survey also asked a direct question about the presence of American troops in Iraq (which for some reason was not included either in Kaplan's story or in the University of Michigan press release). Tessler kindly provided me with a short write-up of the data, forthcoming in the TAARI Newsletter. Here is Table 3, responses to the question "Do you support or oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq?"

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/08/what_the_iraqi_.html

The bottom line: 91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops in the country, up from 74.4% in 2004. 84.5% are "strongly opposed". Among Sunnis, opposition to the US presence went from 94.5% to 97.9% (97.2% "strongly opposed"). Among Shia, opposition to the US presence went from 81.2% to 94.6%, with "strongly opposed" going from 63.5% to 89.7%. Even among the Kurds, opposition went from 19.6% to 63.3%. In other words, it isn't just that Iraqis oppose the American presence - it's that their feelings are intense: only 7.2% "somewhat oppose" and 4.7% "somewhat support."</blockquote>

The Iraqi people need a national, rather than sectarian, political organization that can allow them to express their preference for US withdrawal _if_ that's what they prefer, but sectarian elections as established by Washington clearly do not serve for that purpose. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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