February 14, 2005

The Winners in Iraq: Pro-Iran and Pro-Hezbollah!

Hmmm. Is this exactly what Team Bush had in mind? Hundreds of billions spent, all the deaths, injuries and destruction, anatgonism against the United States at record levels in many places of the world, and we get a government controlled by Islamic parties that are close to Iran. Well, at least it's a triumph for democracy.

Of course I guess we could defend the White House and say that they didn't want democracy - they wanted to install a dictatorship under Chalabi. Of course he was (is?) on Iran's payroll, and is lately woo-ing Muqtada al-Sadr. Can Cheney and the folks at the Defense Department pick dependable friends or what?

Of course it now looks like the only possibility for limiting the influence of the Shiite parties is to get Iraq's Sunni Arabs to take part in the new political system we've installed, and the Shiites are going to build upon. Though of course we've done plenty to make that difficult since 2003. Anyone have any ideas as to how we can go about achieving that? I would have had a few earlier on in our involvement, but given our actions over the course of the last few years, and the fact that I bunch of people with some huge grievances against that population are about to design a new constitution and take over the reins of power ... I'm not optimistic about them wanting to fight within the system. In the long-term hopefully. But for now, I'm not optimistic.

Posted by armand at February 14, 2005 11:19 AM | TrackBack | Posted to International Affairs


Comments

I admit to being confused about all this. The WaPo story was pessimistic, and Juan Cole's take argued that the Shiite parties had gotten almost everything that they want (they don't have the 2/3rd majority to anything they want, but they have a basic majority which means they can pass anything they want). Then I read this NYT story, which makes everything sound rosy:

The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state.

(Snip>

The vote tally, which appeared to leave the Shiite alliance with about 140 of the national assembly's 275 seats, fell short of what Shiite leaders had been expecting, and seemed to blunt some of the triumphant talk that could already be heard in some corners. The final results seemed to ease fears among Iraq's Sunni, Kurd and Christian minorities that the leadership of the Shiite majority might feel free to ignore minority concerns, and possibly fall under the sway of powerful clerics, some of whom advocate the establishment of a strict Islamic state.

So, did the Shiites win big, come up short, or lose? I remain genuinely confused.

Posted by: baltar at February 14, 2005 01:15 PM | PERMALINK

Well, they got twice as many votes as anyone else. That seems like a win to me. And my impression is that they have 140 or 141 seats - so yeah, if they have party discipline they can pass whatever they like. That also seems like a win to me.

One key problem in the reporting on this has to do with the vote totals (and am I the only person who's been amazed at the lack of accusations of vote tampering given that we are getting the results 2 weeks after the balloting? I'm not saying it has or hasn't happened - I just expected someone to be raising that possibility). To the best that I can gather (and it's confusing) some of these stories (including apparently the one in the Times) are simply asserting that the Shiites will get 48.something percent of the seats b/c that's the percentage of the vote they got nation-wide. That's not right though, b/c several small parties that got votes didn't get enough votes to get seats, so using the Hare voting system that's being used here ... well, explaining it would take to long. Suffice to say that the percentage of seats awarded to the bigger parties will be slightly higher than there national vote total, and the stories I've seen referenceing this project that the Shiites have indeed won over 50% of the seats in the national body.

Posted by: Armand at February 14, 2005 04:23 PM | PERMALINK

Armand,
So, you've got to wonder why they didn't pass a constitution like we have, where a party that has 50% of the seats in the national body and the national leader isn't able to get things passed. Oh maybe that's just my undemocratic majoritarian attitude kicking in.

Posted by: Morris at February 14, 2005 06:43 PM | PERMALINK

Yeah, Mo. We've all heard you spiel that majority should be able to do pretty much anything they want to. If it's got 50% + 1 support - screw the losers (or lock 'em, abuse 'em, ensure the lack of equal rights, whatever).

But your way of thinking (which does of course have extremely little to do with the principles of government our great country was founded on) does raise an interesting point that few people seem to push the White House on. OK, so we get that your number one priority is building a world of democracies. Assuming that's true (putting aside your praise for Pakistan, Russia, Saudi, the Uzbeks, etc.) ... what exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean majority rule where governments can do all sorts of horrible and oppressive things (and of course there is that little issue concerning the enormous levels of antipathy that majorities in many countries have toward the United States)? Or do you mean enshrining the liberal values that our country is based on and presumably we want to spread around the world. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand. In many cases, they clearly don't.

Posted by: Armand at February 15, 2005 08:01 AM | PERMALINK

and then there's the inevitable matter, given that self-determination is what we really want for all these proto-democracies, of whether we can handle these countries democratically opting to bite the hand that feeds?

hello, france? germany? turkey? just checking.

Posted by: joshua at February 15, 2005 09:46 AM | PERMALINK
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