And now for something completely different …
I would have much preferred to have seen a free, independent, strongly secular government come to power in Iraq. The Iraqi voters seem to have preferred differently.
I’d written a long post about it, which, in the end, was filled with as much wishful/dreadful thinking as anyone else’s analysis, so I’m not going to post it (no point in drawing uninformed commentary to respond to my uninformed blathering), except for one point:
If the US-preferred slate had won, not only would there have been loud cries of fraud, but all the folks who’ve decried the whole Iraq thang would have finished their stories with “… and then the Evil Conspirators/Neocons/Bushies installed a puppet government under the pretence of ‘free elections.'” The election results do seem to deny that narrative, unless the Evil Conspirators are far more subtle than was thought …
… or else far more bumbling, save that these are the same Evil Conspirators who are said to have fixed the 2000 and 2004 US elections, so presumably fixing the Iraq elections should have been a piece of cake — assuming that there were Evil Conspirators to begin with.
It’s a democracy. I may not like their choices, but I’m pleased as punch that they were able to make them. Ultimately, if democracy is indeed a meaningful thing to support, I have to be aware that folks might vote for things I disagree with (cf. the most recent US election), just as if I value personal freedom and liberty, I have to realize that folks are free to do things I disagree with, too (which sanguinity I hope I can maintain once Katherine is a decade or more older).