Monday, January 31, 2005
Iraq in chaos? Illegitimate election?
But it happens to be untrue. The Afghan election worked so well that, there being insufficient bad news out of it, the Western media's doom-mongers pretended it never happened. They'll have a harder job doing that with Iraq, so instead they'll have to play up every roadside bomb and every dead poll worker. But it won't alter the basic reality: that the election may be imperfect but more than good enough.
OK, that's a bit vague compared with my usual psephological predictions. So how about this: Turnout in the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south probably was higher than in the last U.S., British or Canadian elections. Legitimate enough for ya?
But look beyond the numbers: When you consider the behavior of the Shi'ite and Kurdish parties, they've been remarkably shrewd, restrained and responsible. They don't want to blow their big rendezvous with history and rejoin the rest of the Middle East in the fetid swamp of stable despotism.
Naysayers in the Democratic Party and the U.S. media are so obsessed with Donald Rumsfeld getting this wrong and Condoleezza Rice getting that wrong and President Bush getting everything wrong that they've failed to notice just how surefooted both the Kurds and Shi'ites have been — which in the end is far more important.
OK, that's a bit vague compared with my usual psephological predictions. So how about this: Turnout in the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south probably was higher than in the last U.S., British or Canadian elections. Legitimate enough for ya?
But look beyond the numbers: When you consider the behavior of the Shi'ite and Kurdish parties, they've been remarkably shrewd, restrained and responsible. They don't want to blow their big rendezvous with history and rejoin the rest of the Middle East in the fetid swamp of stable despotism.
Naysayers in the Democratic Party and the U.S. media are so obsessed with Donald Rumsfeld getting this wrong and Condoleezza Rice getting that wrong and President Bush getting everything wrong that they've failed to notice just how surefooted both the Kurds and Shi'ites have been — which in the end is far more important.
