Bloggence, Cunning, Exile

Iraqi Election Result: U.S. Out Now

Naomi Klein writes:
The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."

There are more {bleep} messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund. . . .
{see link above for more}

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Other observers note the irony that Iraqi democracy is now moving toward an Islamic theocracy aligning itself closer with Iran than with the US occupation. So we spent down all of our savings, killed around 100,000 civilians and nearly 2,000 US soldiers, lost respect the world over, and didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, didn't find any connection to Al Qaeda, and didn't find Bin Laden. Instead, we helped install an Islamic theocracy and fueled a dramatic increase in terrorist recruitment of suicide bombers.

Will anyone resign? No. Will anyone be impeached? No. Will anyone apologize for gross incompetence? No. Will anyone be tried for fraud, perjury, war crimes? Are you kidding, this is America! We don't do justice. Everyone responsible will be promoted and re-elected. The only true justice is that historians will have the last say. This administration will go down in the books as the most grotesque in the American Century. Future readers will shake their heads in amazement at how weird people used to be.

Seems the Bush administration forgot to use its new electronic voting machines by Diebold. It worked to give them the election results they wanted in Ohio, why not use them in Iraq? Instead, the Iraqi elections actually had a paper trail that was accountable to one person one vote. Despite the threats and the bombings that occured on election day, more Iraqis voted in their election than Americans voted back in November. Aren't you envious that the Iraqis are exercising more free democracy than Americans are?

As I promised, the paradoxes are free.

posted by E. Heroux @ 4:10 PM