From Steve Clemons' Washington Note blog 01/02/05:
People are dying in this war in Iraq, and soldiers on the front line are making sacrifices -- but our nation, while it has reelected this President and thus assured that this war would continue -- does not feel like a nation making choices in time of war. We are not being asked to make major sacrifices to support our troops or our military; we are not turning over our productive capacity to help speed the protection of auto armor; and we are still sitting on our tax cuts.
From Amitai Etzioni's blog 01/03/05:
The US treated the fact that Afghanistan conducted some kind of an election as proof positive that it has democratized. Iraq is to follow next. However, when elections were conducted in Ukraine, Western observers pointed out that they were not only rigged but also that the opposition leader was not able to campaign in some parts of the country and that other candidates were beaten and threatened.
If the election is not deferred in Iraq, it will make the Ukrainian election shine in comparison. Elections are not democratic magic but an expression of successfully laying the needed foundations.
Though I'm using the latter quotation here, it seems that postponing the election may be politically impossible, since Ayatollah Sistani is insisting on them. But Etzioni has put a good focus on how bogus it is to pretend we've established model democracies in places like Afghanistan or Iraq.
1 comment:
Our exit strategy has to be:
hold elections,
announce that we have been asked to leave,
leave.
All in the next three months.
If we stay longer, the guys who get elected will have no legitimacy at all -- far less than they will be able to claim based on what will ne a deeply flawed election process.
In any case, we cannot afford to stay longer, and we are getting to the point where even Bring'em on Bush realizes it.
The longer we stay the worse it gets. It is time to go.
Neil
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