Before getting to a joint press conference calling for US withdrawal, organizations within each list and between lists have to set aside their (class, ethnic, religious, and other) sectarian interests and work out at least a common minimum program, no easy task in itself (especially if you want the Kurds in), made just about impossible by the system of distribution of economic spoils, geographic control, and so on to be won through elections, which militates against such a task.
While organizations that are bundled into the UIA can get votes in the elections, for voters are encouraged to vote on the basis of sectarian identification first and foremost, beyond the moments of voting, they probably do not command masses of members and supporters (except militia members who are paid by leaders) on a day-to-day basis, with an exception of Moktada al-Sadr, who appears to have a genuine popular following at least among the Shi'i poor (his appeal does not seem to extend much beyond them, though, at this point). Washington can see through the organizational weakness of even the best organized parties, none of which is strong enough to take the leadership role in pulling together a national liberation front that can compel the departure of Americans, much less defeat terrorists and govern Iraq after their departure.
On 8/30/06, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> posted:
> http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/over-100-killed-in-iraq-100-wounded.html
> <snip>
>
>Diwaniyah is run politically by the Supreme Council for Islamic
>Revolution in Iraq, and likely its police and security forces have
>been heavily infiltrated by the Iran-trained Badr Corps, the
>paramilitary of SCIRI (as the NYT also suggests.) So a lot of the
>struggle is probably actually best thought of as Mahdi Army on Badr
>Corps faction fighting.
Juan Cole goes on to write: "Although SCIRI and allies won the provincial elections of January, 2005, since then the Sadr movement has been gaining adherents and influence in this and other southern Shiite provinces. New provincial elections were scheduled but have never been held, in part for fear that the Sadrists would sweep to power in provincial statehouses" (at <http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/over-100-killed-in-iraq-100-wounded.html>).
If that's true, I'm thrilled.
Memo to Khatami and Khamenei:
It is high time to drop SCIRI and Badr. Nothing good for Iran or Iraq will come of them.
On 8/30/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> On Aug 30, 2006, at 12:31 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > 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.
>
> What do you mean by "liberalism"? Freedom of speech and assembly,
> contested elections, etc.? Free-market capitalism?
In political liberalism, the right trumps the good.
The right to (basic political) liberty of an individual trumps the public good (and, by implication, an individual's right to enjoy the public good). Even for social democratically inclined political liberals, Rawls' first principle of justice ("each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others") takes precedence over his second principle ("social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society," and "offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity"). For classical political liberals, Rawls' second principle may not enter the picture, in which case political liberalism becomes virtually indistinguishable from market fundamentalism. The implicit assumptions about the nature of rights-bearing individuals -- autonomy, above all -- on which political liberalism rests tend not to be widely shared among peoples below certain levels of economic development, urbanization, proletarianization, and so on, for many of whom each person is inseparably embedded in kinship, community, religious, and other non-contractual networks of mutual obligations.
Political liberalism tends to prize institutions that are designed to check the dictatorship of a majority, e.g., the Constitution, the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, federalism, etc. in the case of the United States, a country that is far more classically politically liberal than European countries though it is less culturally and socially "liberal" in the commonsense idea of term than them. Political illiberalism tends to slight checks and balances.
All states, liberal or illiberal, however, act in the name of national security, so a liberal democracy can very well suspend political liberalism in the name of defending it (e.g., approving torture in the name of defending freedom from terrorism) and end up becoming an illiberal democracy. Conversely, a structurally illilberal democracy, when its existence is not threatened, can, in practice, permit extensive liberty, even more extensive liberty than a nominally liberal democracy does, for liberty is, after all, a matter of practice, not of what's on the books. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>