Bush wins Iraq election

In typical Bush style, victory was declared without counting votes


Expertly woven propaganda put Bush over the top in the game of Iraqi illusion. But given the true desires expressed by the brave voters, tough anti-democratic measures will be needed to keep the US in control.

After 14 days and a litany of "problems" and "recounts" following the January 30 voting in Iraq, a news release this afternoon says that results will be announced tomorrow.

Already released are results of voting for local councils. According to a Washington Post story, "Islamic parties will be heavily represented on provincial councils across Iraq."

And all the signs for the national vote point toward Shiite domination. But this same Post story contained the following curious statement:

Elections officials cautioned that turnout totals for the national election could differ from the provincial totals. At most polls, voters were given two ballots -- one national, one local -- and officials said some may have turned in only one.

I don't know what's going on. It seems clear from rumor-like reporting over the last few days that early returns show the Shiite list backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is in command. Unless "some sort of chicanery" I posted about three weeks ago comes to pass -- and that can never be discounted in a Bush election -- a government sympathetic to Islamic law is on the Iraqi horizon.

However, the American administration has been insisting that "a theocratic Iraq is unlikely." Why not? The election results are clearly pointing the other way. How do American officials like Cheney and Rumsfeld know different? If we use terms along the lines Juan Cole did a few days ago, a "theocratic Iraq" means that "shariah or Islamic canon law" will replace civil law, and the clergy will influence the new constitution at its core, but mullahs will not run the day-to-day affairs of the state. Cole concludes by saying

So much for Mr. Cheney's fantasy of a non-intrusive Grand Ayatollah unconcerned with politics who wants a separation of religion and state. Cheney was only right that Sistani doesn't want to rule directly. Nothing else he said on the subject is true!

So contrary to my earlier prediction, it sure does look like Allawi is going down. Could the extremely poor showing of Allawi -- despite a massive US-backed TV/media campaign -- be a cause for the delay of the results, as American operatives scrambled to devise a strategy for retaining essential control from the losing side?

Naomi Klein has some possible answers to this question. She points out today in a deeply insightful Guardian piece that

A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA); the second plank in the UIA platform called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq".

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to citizens to build homes"; the alliance also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects". In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by the former chief American envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

But Bush has already made it crystal clear that there will be no early timetable for American withdrawal of its troops or of its plan for economic domination of Iraq. In his February 2 State of the Union message, the president could not have been more clear that he will never accede to the democratic desires the Iraqi voters expressed with their electoral choice. The president said

We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out. We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself. And when that result is achieved, our men and women serving in Iraq will return home with the honor they have earned.

In other words, America will decide how Iraq will be run and will not leave unless a suitable corps of collaborators can be developed. Knowing something of the history of Iraq suggests that what Bush says here means that the US will never leave the country.

Klein describes Tony Blair's Bush echo and offers an explanation of how the US will accomplish maintenance of control:

Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way - he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as the leader of Iraq's next government.

Al-Mahdi is the Bush administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatise [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises", and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law, "very promising to the American investors". It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.

On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform, and instead appears to be echoing Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family, Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases (call it the "oil-for-women programme"). Everyone wins except the voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for very different policies.

There you have it, the real story of the Iraqi election. Even though Allawi is soundly beaten, Bush and his henchmen still win.

But everybody else loses, including the Iraqi people -- who look to be occupied indefinitely -- and the US troops who must carry out this shameful policy for years to come.