Turnout appeared high in Anbar province, an overwhelmingly Sunni area that largely boycotted the 2005 elections because of threats by Sunni insurgents and opposition to the U.S.-led invasion....
Voting was quiet in the southern Shiite city of Basra, where the choice was between Shiite religious parties and the more secular brand of Shiite politics offered by Mr. Maliki’s slate....
January 31, 2009
What if the Iraqis held elections and nobody died -- or even got hurt?
That seems to be happening today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
42 comments:
Clearly not worthy of even a casual mention by Obama in his Weekly Address today.
Link
Shame he could not spare fifteen seconds to wish the Iraqi people well on their election day.
Too busy selling the $800+ billion stimulus package.
Was Natan Sharanski right all along? Can the mixture of Iraqi people groups become a free people? The world awaits the answer as do many American servicemen maimed by roadside bombs.
I see Blogo timed his exit perfectly, and he can run in a less corrupt place than Chicago...Iraq.
*yawn* Not news. Maybe President Obama will work out and remove his shirt to wipe the sweat off, now that is news!
I'd say good - let's declare victory and get the hell out.
Which is exactly what I wrote on my blog after the elections in late 2003.
Sorry - that should read the elections of late 2005.
Looks like someone died already. Oh well. I'm sure the deserved it.
here were no reports of widespread violence as voting got under way, although a shooting occurred in Baghdad's Sadr City district. According to Shiite lawmaker Ghufran al-Saidi, a military officer opened fire and injured two people after voters chanted slogans at a polling station.
But Iraq's military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told Al-Arabiya television that the shooting occurred after some people tried to carry mobile phones through security cordons. One person was killed and one injured, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090131/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq
This is only another sad case of Voting for OIL. Someone alert the NYT. If this keeps up, what will happen to the jobs of Union members who once worked in the production and sale of RPG's, suicide bomb belts, and Roadside Bombs. Full employment may require a return to traditional Blood for Oil bailout.
Traditionalguy;
The drill was to give the Iraqi's the chance to choose for themselves. It required that some pay the ultimate price, some get maimed, and most survive the experience.
It appears you have missed the point of the exercise. Our military already have their answer.
We won the war. It's fascinating to watch so many people take so little joy in victory.
We saved South Korea, and we saved Iraq. It's not a fascist police state.
Military victory matters because the consequences can't be spun away forever. Truman got his due.
Let's make a note of this. If in a year or two there are peaceful election in Afghanistan we'll see how the NYT (assuming they are still in business) reports those elections.
What if the Iraqis held elections and nobody died -- or even got hurt?
We’d have yet another reason to believe the world is slowly, but surely, becoming a better place to live.
Vet 66... Thanks for the better focus on the mission of the couageous servicemen.My wonder is really a prayer that the Iraqis do make the right choices now that the freedom to do democratic political power transfers has been purchased for them.
Freedom is never purchased, it is protected.
A military motivational poster sums it up:
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
The rape rooms are closed, the shredders have been dismantled, and citizens can sleep well without fear of the midnight knock on the door. Our work is almost done there. Unfortunately, for the forseeable future, our attention will turn to Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen where our work has just begun.
I think Prof. Althouse's president has made it clear that the United States is not interested in democracy in other countries; our foreign policy is one of what Mickey Kaus called "brutal realism." If you don't threaten us militarily, we don't care about your internal affairs.
And obviously the party media will repeat the party line. What else would they do?
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Attackers in Iraq killed three Sunni Arab provincial election candidates and two election workers Thursday in violence that has startled an eager electorate in the run-up to the polls Saturday.
Althouse's definiton of a quiet election!
I have always knwon this is possible since I was there in 2003. Lots of critics underestimated the Iraqi sense of nationalism, which was especially present in the Shia majority south region. The locals there always thought of Mookie Sadr as Irans creature and didn't listen to him or respect him the way the folks in Baghdads Sadr City did. Mookies respect was also tied to his father, an actual Grand Ayatollah who was murdered by Saddam. Sadr was never that, but the press latched onto him as a foil to the US in order to advance their 'quagmire' narrative. Other than Mookie, there never was a broad native insurgency outside of Saddams Revolutionary Guards divisions who went underground to be guerillas. Their mistake was turning to AlQueda for arms and support thinking that their fellow Sunnis would actually help, when AQ was only interested in imposing Islamic totalitarianism ala Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan by fomenting a civil war. If we had left in 2005, the surge wouldn't have happened.
Good for Iraq.
Althouse's definiton of a quiet election!
in that part of the world I would say yes for sure. India has been a demcoracy for most of 50-60 years. Poltical violence driven by ethnic and religious grievances has been a regular occurrance the whole time.
Johnny B. D. said...
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Attackers in Iraq killed three Sunni Arab provincial election candidates and two election workers Thursday in violence that has startled an eager electorate in the run-up to the polls Saturday.
Althouse's definiton of a quiet election!
So, Johnny B. you're getting self righteous about this attack. Well, let's see, statistically there were 45 murders in the US on November 4th, 2008. Where was the sanctimony then?
source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_murders_committed_per_day_in_US
"We won the war. It's fascinating to watch so many people take so little joy in victory."
Liberals are joyless. They are only comfortable when they are miserable and naturally they want to drag everyone else into it.
"Liberals are joyless. They are only comfortable when they are miserable and naturally they want to drag everyone else into it."
What do you think the "Stimulus" bill is about? Inflicting misery, because misery is good for Democrats.
A successful and peaceful democratic election in Iraq?
I blame Bush.
Obama's priorities seem to be based solely on maintaining liberal power.
Iraq gets all of three paragraphs of concern on the official Whitehouse website. And Iraqi elections?
Amazingly, Obama can't even mention them in his weekly address. Go figure. Even more amazing, is that more attention is paid to simply "women" on the Obama administrations website than Iraq,economy, Immigration, Defense, Energy/Environment, and even Fiscal Matters Nice priorities.
It's too soon to take notice of positive events in Iraq, because Pres Bush will get the credit. Wait about 6 months, and then it will be in headlines everywhere, claiming it was due to Hopenchange.
Don’t you see the contrast with the simplistic the previous BushHitlerMcChimpy Administration, which was stained ab initio, having taken office in a stolen election?
Wait, this just in:
“The winning candidate in the election was found to have had undeclared income in his tax returns”.
Nevermind. He used the “Rangel Rule” & paid up after audit, without interest & penalties.
It makes me cry.
Thank you, W, and all the people who served in this noble cause.
I'm thinking back to when discussion of supporting the surge was brough up and the NYT suggested that a genocide very well may occur but we still needed to withdraw and people like Obama (who Althouse still voted for) and Clinton were calling Patreus a shill or a liar and damning any potential for hope over there and in fact hoping for failure to consign Iraqis to a fate worse than death. All to get themselves elected and to zing Bush.
The jokes on them though. Elections proceed apace, they didn't get the genocide they were looking for. Obama says he's all about hope and change, but in fact he and nearly all the democrats were in fact rooting for hopelessness and the status quo in Iraq.
For all the talk about how the election isn't perfect by western standards by the various antiwar lefties, I'll simply note that if they had their way, there wouldn't be any elections at this point, because Iraq would have been too busy being engaged in mass genocide rather than orderly elections, or if you want to go back even further they'd have perfect elections where 100% of the population voted for Sadaam Hussein.
Thanks to Bush.
And too bad Obama couldn't give the troops their due. That doesn't speak well of him as their CIC.
Not much of a surprise to me - at least around al-Basrah.
Folks I met there were more than happy to go back to being residents of an interesting and lively city than victims of the quasi-Talib JAM/Iranian proxies.
Good for them.
And I don't care about "credit" for this being given to whomever as much as I wish the Iraqis would get their due.
Maybe this is one of those rare occassions where success really is an orphan and failure has a thousand fathers? I'm disappointed the liberals in this country can't take satisfaction in a successful and peacefull Iraq. I don't think they will ever forgive Bush for winning.
"I don't think they will ever forgive Bush for winning."
Wow. That's probably very true.
It was nice coming home from fighting the Persian Gulf War to recognition of our victory by our government and folks in hundreds of towns across America.
In contrast, my younger brother who served in the second round Iraq War is being given the cold shoulder by the government who sent him to war. I suppose he can be thankful that the anti war crowd is not spitting on and throwing feces at him as he comes back home in uniform.
Hey, Major John, thanks to you and your comrades in arms. Hope your "miserable donut" is going well.
daredevil-66 said...
Maybe this is one of those rare occassions where success really is an orphan and failure has a thousand fathers? I'm disappointed the liberals in this country can't take satisfaction in a successful and peacefull Iraq. I don't think they will ever forgive Bush for winning.
Oh come on now. How do you not know by now that leftists and liberals are the most miserable people on earth. Ever. They wallow in misery. It's their best friend, anger is a close cousin that comes to visit more often than not. What would a leftist or a liberal do if they had nothing to rally, rail, or a contradict against? Well, then they would either become welfare frauds or heaven forbid actually productive. They need misery, otherwise how could they ever project it onto everyone else they claim needs their help and from government no less. Optimism and good news just isn't part of their world view otherwise they would most often than not be conservatives. Stunner.
President Obama congratulated the iraqis on successful elections today. I will not hold my breath expecting him to congratulate the US troops that made elections possible.
The Arab world needed a game changer.
May Bush's Hail Mary instincts after 9/11 were the answer for what ails the ME in the long slog?
History will write itself, in spite of the leftist Bush smearfest.
Can the mixture of Iraqi people groups become a free people?
I wish people would stop phrasing it that way. They're human beings. Of course they can become a free people.
The question is how long it'll take, and whether we think it is worth the effort to help them.
I agree, TRungren, the unintended consequence of the badly managed war that allowed the insurgency is that ME people now realize that Islamic or nationalist strong men really suck at governance. You never see big anti-US marches anywhere except in Iran, where I suspect they're stage-managed. I really think the theocratic movement is collapsing; Iran will be the last to go but it will go.
Yes, it was a game changer. It threw the plot in a whole different direction.
My long distance and filtered view of the recent Iraq campaign reminded me of the Guadalcanal campaign from 8/1942 thru 12/1942. The American invasion was virtually unchallenged, but thereafter the overconfident Japanese forces began bombing daily and battleship or cruiser shelling nightly while landing their 40,000 troops for 3 major attacks and 1 smaller one over the next 3 months expecting to easily drive out the cowardly, soft Marines. The American leaders in DC also expected our defeat, and only the Marines saw things differently. Their continued victories finally convinced FDR, who then sent in a surge lead by Halsey, who had replaced the Admirals who had only tried to avoid losing their ships to the all powerful Japanese. Then in 8 weeks, the Japanese were beaten, evacuated the Islandand thereafter referred to Gualdalcanal the Island of the death of the Japanese Army.Do you see the similarities that I see?
Mr Obama praised the technical assistance by the United Nations and other organisations to Iraq's electoral commission, which he said "performed professionally under difficult circumstances."
But not a single word of praise or even acknowledgment for our men and women in uniform who made these elections possible.
If memory serves, the cowards at the UN fled in the face of the terrorists in Iraq and deserve nothing but derision and scorn.
Mr. Obama, get your head on straight.
Post a Comment