The Iraqi voters seem to have preferred differently<\/a>.<\/p>\nI’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:<\/p>\n
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 …<\/p>\n
… 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.<\/p>\n
It’s a democracy.<\/em> 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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5280,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/13\/a_strategy.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":0},"title":"A strategy","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Apr-04 9:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"John Kerry has written a strategy for Iraq, to address critics who say he's been stronger on the second-guessing than the actual leadership thang. There are some positive bits here,...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4089,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/07\/smoking_guns_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":1},"title":"Smoking Guns","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 7-Feb-03 10:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a damning little article from the Asian Times about how Germany has not only supplied much of the materials and machine parts for Iraq's various WMD programs over the...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131465,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/09\/to-the-victor-belong-the-oils.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":2},"title":"To the Victor belong the Oils!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 9-Sep-16 3:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"He's talked about it before, but at the \"Commander-in-Chief Forum\" last night, Trump doubled-down on the idea that when we went into Iraq, we should have done a whole bunch of things differently, especially ... keep Iraq's oil.In the past, Trump argued that this would have paid for improved veterans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4038,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/24\/shields_up_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":3},"title":"Shields Up","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Feb-03 9:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine that -- the Iraqi government, which is taking the lead in \"assigning\" voluntary Human Shields who have traveled to Iraq, is more interested in protecting communication centers and oil...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4046,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/23\/suggestions.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":4},"title":"Suggestions","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 23-Feb-03 9:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Max Sawicky has been lauded for his post on How to be Pro-War Without Being a Hypocrite. Since being unhypocritical is important to me, let me make a few comments...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4200,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/20\/thank_heavens_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":7528,"position":5},"title":"Thank heavens","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Jan-03 10:59am","format":false,"excerpt":"Realing that the UN inspectors in country are having difficulties finding enough material breaches on their own, Iraq is forming their own teams of inspectors to help out with things....","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}