So in your opinion, if people are “forced” to pick their own represtative goverment that’s not democracy…it’s some kind of dictatorship. You live in a bizarro world.
See my post on this thread “01-14-2005, 03:29 PM”
So 14 of the 18 districts in Iraq are considered pacified and voting will take place as normal. I don’t believe anyone in authority has said those 4 districts will not have voting. It is only certain areas in those districts that are considered dangerous, I believe. The residents will be permitted to vote outside their districts and there is still talk of permitting “rolling voting” so the people in those districts can vote the following week when the MNF can focus their security in those areas.
Almost 40% of eligible American voters “boycotted” the last Presidential election. I don’t see how this is significant even if it is true which is still to be determined.
Who has the USA kept out of the elections? There are Islamic slates of candiates. The Communist Party is running unimpeded. Who is the mean 'ol USA keeping out that you would like to see? The “Blow-up Iraq” party?
Ah! So are you bemoaning the Taliban fighters killed by the mean 'ol US? The al-Qaida training based turned to dust? It is a “cake walk” compared to what we were told by some would happen (5000 soldiers killed in the initial assault and hundreds of thousands of civilians–that hasn’t happened in 20 months!). Do I think they are better off than being afraid of “dreaming” something revolutionary in their sleep? Yes I do.
I think to see it differently is self-absorbed and cruel.
Everybody keeps talking about “Iraqis.” What’s an Iraqi? (Aside from the obvious definition of a person who lives in the arbitrarily drawn borders of Iraq).
If you want to know the general sentiment of the people in the region, who else to ask?
All in one sentence you’re arguing that these people should be a representative democracy but that they don’t know enough about democracy to understand it and hence, we should ignore what they are saying.
It just seems like Americans think that Iraqis are a united people awaiting a chance to make common cause and produce a brighter future in Iraq. Nothing could be further than the truth. In reality, the occupation, puppet government, and farce of elections are nothing more than continuing the authoritarian tradition of forcing together people who otherwise would not associate. So there really are no Iraqis, just as there are no Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, Pakistanis, Soviets, etc. These are somewhat different than Americans and Brits who are heterogenous people making common cause for common goals (for the most part). Yes, this can be done, but it is an artificial process dependent on the cooperation of the different groups. Iraq doesn’t seem to be conducive to this in the least.
My point is that it’s useless to talk about “what Iraqis want” since the Western idea of an Iraqi seems to be some sort of composite character that doesn’t really exist. The people who live in Iraq are in actuality Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, or any one of dozens of tribal affiliations. Virtually nobody identifies themselves intrinsically as Iraqi… it is all in terms of extrinsic factors such as “we who live in the borders of Iraq” or “we who suffered under Saddam Hussein” or “we who are finding themselves monumentally fucked by the present hostilities,” etc. This is something that America needs to start understanding, or the situation will never improve.
There is a sense of this but it is almot entirely the result of being ruled by dictatorship rather than having to do with any sort of real heritage. Most Arab tribes consist of Sunni as well as Shi’a. Kurds are mostly Sunni. It was in Saddam’s interest to stir up sectarian divisions which would probably have led to Iraq being a failed state in a short time if we had not interceded (think Lebanon or Afghanistan in the 80s). Read Christopher Hitchens’ account here.
The Shi’a Arabs (which again cross most tribes) are the quickest to realize this since they did not fare well under the previous circumstances. The Sunni Arabs (statistically and relatively rather than universally) are the slowest to grasp this since they fared best under it (statistically and relatively rather than universally or even actually). Kurds, because they were singled out based on their nationality are the most likely to see themselves as ethnically distinct but as long as the new government does not oppress them, they are likely to play along.
BTW The nations of Yugoslavia were divided along religious lines (Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim). But Yugoslavs were not particularly religious so the fighting was more about “where you don’t go to church” rather than where you do. The divisions were drummed up by revolutionaries who found it personally beneficial to do so. Yugoslavia collapsed because the West (particularly Europe) helped it to collapse. Had certain key nations not rushed to recognize declared states that were barely formed and probably not initially viable, today we probably would be talking about the “uprisings” that occured in Yugoslavia in the early 90s rather than the horrors and ethnic cleansings actually occured.