PDiddie wrote:Just in case anyone's OD'ing on delirium from the Iraqi elections (and that would appear to be several of you), take a break and watch some hyper-partisan foolishness:
http://movies.ziaspace.com/SNLTwins.wmv
Jenna: "I was so drunk, I made out with Dick Cheney's daughter."
Barbara: "Jenna!"
Jenna:"What? Not the gay one..."
That kind of hyper-partisan foolishness, I love!
Gunga, you're doing a fine job of representing your side's hyper-partisan nuts. The idea here is to celebrate Iraqi election, however.
Early estimations are estimating 72% voter turnout. That's better than any U.S. election I've ever seen!
Woo Hoooo!
Reality check - the election may have gone well, but marks no endpoint - other, perhaps, than to yet one more of the cherished anticipations of those indisposed to accept as legitimate anything involving Bush The Greater; it is the beginning of a process that will take years to bear fruit. It is merely the beginning. The seed has been planted, that's all.
The thing is, if this had happened under Kerry's watch, I bet we would see a lot less negativity in this thread. Meanwhile, the American Revolution didn't produce a perfect overnight Democracy either. I agree it would be naive to consider it a done deal at this point. But if you don't plant the seed, the apple tree won't grow.
I don't think anyone imagined this was the end of the job in Iraq.
Pretty sure everyone knows there are possibilities for reversal, civil war, infighting in the Parliament and all manner of crap...
Despite all that--it is STILL a powerful day for democracy--for Iraq--for those people--and a stunning blow against al-Quaida, and those thugs. (And, it appears, most Democrats...)
Women freely voted today. That in itself was enough to have me celebrating. Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds.
Hope you can feel it.
I really want to join in your hooray shouts, but this was the election for Transitional National Assembly.
Parliamentary elections are said to be hold in December.
Walter--
It seems you are so meticulous in your zest to find a mistake I may have made, you assume very frequently I've made a mistake when I haven't. I'm sure to provide you with actual mistakes--but I need this one erased from your tally, please.
I was listing a litany of things that could go wrong in the future. There will be a Parliament in the future. There may be infighting or problems in that body, when they see what a more permanent, elected, representative Iraqi government looks like.
But, it is very heartening to see your responses re the Iraqi vote. I think your responses show that you are someone who has genuine good hopes for the people of Iraq. I respect that.
OCCOM BILL wrote:Early estimations are estimating 72% voter turnout. That's better than any U.S. election I've ever seen!
Woo Hoooo!
72 per cent turnout of 'registered voters' throughout the country according to the Iraq Election Commission - which mades a 43 per cent of Iraqis vote :wink:
Walter Hinteler wrote:
72 per cent turnout of 'registered voters' throughout the country according to the Iraq Election Commission - which mades a 43 per cent of Iraqis vote :wink:
Children don't vote in this country either...
Anyone else following the reports from Middle-Eastern/European/non-U.S. news sources?
Just a bit of trivia for ya, O'Bill - I believe 1960's 65% was the highest US voter turnout. Last year, the figure was a bit under 61%. This summer's EU elction overall voter turnout was 45.3% - 155 Million or so out of about 350 Million eligible. The first EU-wide vote, in '79, saw a turnout of 63%, with each successive election showing a decline in participants. The recent elections in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Palestine all have recorded voter turnout totals greater than those of any Western democracy apart from those few in which voting is mandatory.
ehBeth wrote:Anyone else following the reports from Middle-Eastern/European/non-U.S. news sources?
Oh, you betchya. A handy portal for Arab/Middle East perspective is
Al Bawaba News
Another is
WorldNews - Iraq Daily (also accessible from Al Bawaba, but this is a direct link)
gungasnake wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:
72 per cent turnout of 'registered voters' throughout the country according to the Iraq Election Commission - which mades a 43 per cent of Iraqis vote :wink:
Children don't vote in this country either...
you know that is not what Walter's post meant, gunga. there is no benefit to being disingenuous for you.
gungasnake wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:
72 per cent turnout of 'registered voters' throughout the country according to the Iraq Election Commission - which mades a 43 per cent of Iraqis vote :wink:
Children don't vote in this country either...
Well, I asked that in another thread already: since we don't have to register especially for elections in Europe, the turnout here is taken from the number od all, who could vote.
Seems, that a number of e.g. 60% in the USA is just from those, who registered?
Iraq's Electoral Commission said voter turnout has exceeded expectations, with about 60 per cent of eligible voters casting ballots.
John Kerry was just on TV looking downright miserable, shaking his head and putting a negative spin on the Iraqi election.
I see some of the usual suspects here are weighing in to do the same
Doesn't matter. Nothing the MSM predicted came true
This is a glorious day!
I keep trying to imagine this pain this must be causing the democrats...
I've dropped this lovely piece on a couple of threads, but it can fit here too.
Quote:Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy
Whatever your view of the war, you should embrace today's election
Michael Ignatieff
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer
The election in Iraq is without precedent. Never, not even in the dying days of Weimar Germany, when Nazis and Communists brawled in the streets, has there been such a concerted attempt to destroy an election through violence - with candidates unable to appear in public, election workers driven into hiding, foreign monitors forced to 'observe' from a nearby country, actual voting a gamble with death, and the only people voting safely the fortunate expatriates and exiles abroad.
Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.
Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?
Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.
The Bush administration has managed the nearly impossible: to turn democracy into a disreputable slogan.
Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neo-conservative bombast. Anti-war ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies. And then there are the ideological fools in the Arab world, and even a few in the West, who think the 'insurgents' are fighting a just war against US imperialism. This makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates - fascists.
What may also be silencing voices is the conventional wisdom that has been thrown over the debate on Iraq like a fire blanket - everyone believes that Iraq is a disaster; hence elections are doomed. As I was told by one European observer, all that remains is the final act. We are waiting, he said, for the helicopters to lift off the last Americans from the roofs of the green zone in Baghdad. For its part, the Bush administration sometimes seems to support the elections less to give the Iraqis a chance at freedom than to provide what Henry Kissinger, speaking of Vietnam, called 'a decent interval' before collapse.
Beneath the fire blanket of defeatism, everyone - for and against the war - is preparing exit strategies. Those who were against tell us that democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint, when the actual issue is whether it can survive being hijacked at gunpoint.
Other experts tell us how 'basically' violent Iraqi society is, as a way of explaining why insurgency has taken root. A more subtle kind of condescension claims that Iraq has been scarred by Ba'athism and cannot produce free minds. All this savant expertise ignores the evidence that Iraqis want free institutions and that their leaders have fought to establish them in near-impossible circumstances.
Consider the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who demanded democratic elections in 2003. Since the beginning, Sistani has refused either to ratify US occupation or to legitimise Shia extremism. In the face of incessant provocation, he has marginalised men of violence. His aides have been assassinated, but no calls to massacre the Sunnis or the occupiers have been issued.
Or consider the Kurds, who put aside their infighting, produced a common slate for the elections and kept their peshmergas from seizing Kirkuk and thus saved the country from a civil war.
Finally, consider the moderate Sunnis, who have joined the Allawi government and risked the fury of the Sunni insurgents.
The defeatism of Washington think-tanks and newspaper editorials misses a simple point: the only displays of political prudence and democratic courage have been by the much-despised Iraqis, not their supposedly all-seeing imperial benefactors. Since we lack the grace to admit that Iraqis have shown more wisdom and courage than we have, we don't trust that wisdom and courage to save Iraq now.
The Bush administration knows that, while its mistakes have cost it any real influence in Iraq, its historical reputation will depend on whether freedom takes root there. Already the revisionists are working over the facts: the best way to write the history in advance is to shift the blame onto the Iraqis themselves. Those who opposed the war collude with this revisionism in advance by giving up on the Iraqis and this, their only chance of freedom.
Let us have the decency to support people who are fighting for a free election, and let us have the honesty not to blame them for our own incompetence if they fail. There is still no reason to assume they will.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1401698,00.html
Walter Hinteler wrote:gungasnake wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:
72 per cent turnout of 'registered voters' throughout the country according to the Iraq Election Commission - which mades a 43 per cent of Iraqis vote :wink:
Children don't vote in this country either...
Well, I asked that in another thread already: since we don't have to register especially for elections in Europe, the turnout here is taken from the number od all, who could vote.
Seems, that a number of e.g. 60% in the USA is just from those, who registered?
No, that's eligible, same as Iraq. That 43% figure doesn't fit anywhere. It can't be the kids, either, because kids are half of the country. This is a shameless distraction anyway. Despite horrific threats and attempts at violence, the Iraqis at least matched the United States' best performance. This was a truly amazing display of defiance in the face of their would-be oppressors. Give that heroic populous it's due. They earned it.
OCCOM BILL wrote:No, that's eligible, same as Iraq. That 43% figure doesn't fit anywhere. It can't be the kids, either, because kids are half of the country. This is a shameless distraction anyway. Despite horrific threats and attempts at violence, the Iraqis at least matched the United States' best performance. This was a truly amazing display of defiance in the face of their would-be oppressors. Give that heroic populous it's due. They earned it.
I just asked a question, and when you ever would have really read what I wrote, you couldn't have responded in such a way!
[I didn't mention 'kids' in my original post at all: this was introduced by gunga, btw.]
