ATTENTION BUSHWHACKER CANNOTS!!!!!!!!
(AND DOOMSDAY DIVAS - YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12000912%255E31501,00.html
Elections in tough places give
optimism a good name
January 21, 2005
RECENT elections held in adverse to near-impossible circumstances have been remarkably successful.
In East Timor, bloody terror instigated by the Indonesian army failed to deter people from voting in overwhelming numbers for independence.
Then came Afghanistan, whose chances of holding an election amid jihadist violence and implacable tribal rivalries were derided by Western nihilists, anti-Americans, left-liberal ideologues and pessimistic realists.
Subsequently we have seen people assert themselves through the ballot box, at personal risk, in Ukraine and Palestine.
These precedents give optimism a certain respectability in anticipating the first phase of Iraq's first democratic elections nine days hence - especially considered as part of the US's anti-terrorist global strategy. That an election is being held at all is a victory in war.
The frantic election-blocking violence of the Baathist-Sunni restorationists and their jihadist helpers attests to this. The tone of intractable Western opponents of American actions in Iraq has become quite bullying.
Sounding especially sour are commentators infected with the patronising, old-fashioned, fanatically secularist European view of Americans as naive and pious adolescents. Their failure to credit Americans with the stamina, resourcefulness and streak of hard-edged self-interest that brought Cold War victory leads these critics into Pixar fantasies ofAmericans as guileless missionaries tryingto bring the gospel of democracy to the Fuzzy Wuzzies.
May I (again) recommend George Friedman's excellent book, America's Secret War, for an account of the sophisticated and pragmatic way the US planned its responses to the 9/ll jihadist attacks?
It has achieved an important strategic success by moving the war against terror off its own soil into jihadist territory. There have been many misjudgments and missteps and the costs are high - but not as high as they would be in a war fought in Miami and Los Angeles rather than Fallujah and Kabul.
I know, for the most part, only what I read in English about Iraq and the war on terror, so I am not an expert.
However, I do claim, as context for my reading, pretty good understanding of American society and politics, acquired over more than 40 years by wide and frequent travel in the US, lengthy periods of residence and having been editor of two American metropolitan dailies.
George Bush's re-election is probably the crucial event of the post-9/ll era. No cabal of neo-cons (nor isolationist paleo-cons, in William Safire's coinage) can usurp the people's authority over foreign policy. Bush has been authorised to continue his post-9/11 strategies (while smartening up his tactics).
I don't believe Americans see the world in simplistic Manichean terms or that they equate laying the foundations of democracy in Iraq with sprinkling holy water on the Iraqis, so they can experience redemption and live happily ever after.
I'm not alone in this. In 1991, when the US was assessing its post-Cold War prospects, Irving Kristol commented in America's Purpose: New Visions of US Foreign Policy, a collection of essays edited by Owen Harries, that "the futility of a foreign policy whose purpose is to 'enhance democracy' is apparent to most Americans".
Kristol defined three core aspects of self-interest that would shape the foreign policy of the US as sole superpower: opposition to the emergence of another superpower "whose political and social values are profoundly hostile to ours" (such as the militant wing of Islamic fundamentalism); protection of nations that largely shared America's political principles and social values; relations with other nations conducted "candidly, on a case-by-case basis".
This is generally the course the Bush administration has taken. Popular judgment that the President is pursuing the national interest is the bulwark of American patience and resolve over Iraq.
Whether or not Sunnis are dissuaded from voting by guerilla terror, Iraq in a few days will have a legislative assembly of 275 members, each the representative of thousands of citizens who freely chose him orher, an unprecedented event in the country's history.
No matter what claims are made against its legitimacy, the assembly's representative aspects will give it weight as it constructs a constitution and oversees the preparations for the election of a national government by the end of this year.
The line will be drawn with new clarity between a process of government in which all can participate and a
self-serving minority seeking power by murdering their countrymen.
Predictions of civil war after the elections establish a Shi'ite-Kurdish majority don't scan. Civil war is widely seen already to exist.
Thomas Friedman, The New York Times's chief foreign correspondent, a pessimistic realist, hopes for successful elections "out of respect for the Iraqis who have been willing to risk their lives for a chance to vote, out of contempt for insurgents who want to prevent that and out of deep conviction that something very important is at stake".
Friedman could also speak for the optimistic realists.
The kid's right: She has become an old woman.
