Colombia is a state where the government does not have 40% of the country under its control, with numerous drug wars, civil wars involving FARC, elections still take place, would you consider these elections legitimate, if so, why is it so different for Iraqis? Aren’t the situations in the present somewhat comparative?
Is anyone going to answer this?
The human rights situation in Colombia is indeed almost as desperate as that in Iraq, and the 2002 elections were heavily criticised by independent observers. Does this make them “illegitimate”? I suppose they might in a strictly legal sense, although what option is there? Flawed elections are arguably better than no elections at all (or arguably not if a dictatorship is at least stable even if it violates all kinds of human rights itself.)
Nobody in their right minds will consider Iraq a genuine democracy after the election. The difference is that, however undemocratic, bombs and beheadings were not a feature of Saddam’s “elections”.
Given their chronic lack of control of the country and the strength of the rival groups, I’d question whether or not the Colombian gov’t can said to be a legitimate gov’t of any type. FARC actually provides most of the services that one would expect of the gov’t in thier part of the country, to the point where I would say they are the gov’t (albeit a corrupt and violent one) of the countryside that they control.
If Iraq can still be compared to Colombia in a few years time, with large, psuedo-gov’ts that use terrorist tactics to control large swaths of the country, then we will have failed in our mission there, elections or no.