Election engineering failure
One of the last unembedded journalists in Iraq explains what has been voted in
The reporting from Baghdad by Patrick Cockburn of the UK Independent has been invaluable these last few weeks. Here's the topper, published December 21, archived at Counterpunch with the following headline & lede: Iraq Election Spells Total Defeat for US; ``The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair, as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral.''
The whole story is worth a read, as are all filed by Cockburn.
Evidently, the US has all but given up trying to shape the elected spectrum in Iraq. (See this post and the Sy Hersh piece from last summer referenced therein about the way the US had thrown its weight around trying to influence the January election.) Now, despite another attempt by the US/UK to bolster their favorite, the hated Iyad Allawi, Islamic fundamentalist movements and Iran-friendly forces are solidifying their positions in the country with real electoral legitimacy and strengthening militia forces.
While not a peep is ever heard here in the US about these actualities of Iraqi politics, the pie-eyed lunacies issued by President Bush get the air play. On Sunday he spoke as a sort of flower child, preaching a togetherness of America and its Iraqi puppets, ``working toward the same goal -- a democratic Iraq that can defend itself, that will never again be a safe haven for terrorists, and that will serve as a model of freedom for the Middle East,'' where, ``the institutions of a unified and lasting democracy, in which all of Iraq's people are included and represented.''
Of course, on this Iraqi unity front, the ``news is encouraging,'' as a ``voter was asked, `Are you Sunni or Shia?' And he responded, `I am Iraqi.'''
Cockburn lays waste to these fantasies with a strong dose of reality,The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq. Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. ``In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq,'' said Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator....
It is yet to be see how far away from US interests in key areas the new Iraqi government will be allowed to stray before it finds itself in open conflict with its belligerent occupying allies.
The elections are also unlikely to see a diminution in armed resistance to the US by the Sunni community. Insurgent groups have made clear that they see winning seats in parliament as the opening of another front. The US is trying to conciliate the Sunni by the release of 24 top Baathist leaders without charges. But the main demand of the Sunni resistance is a time table for a US withdrawal without which they are unlikely to agree a ceasefire even if they had the unity to negotiate such an agreement.
