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Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Gag me with a spoon

The triumphalism about the Iraqi "elections" is insane. Even Jon Stewart was doing it. The Sunnis boycotted, over 50 people were killed, the ballots were confusing and unpublicized. Several of those purple fingers that the cartoonists are having so much triumphal glee with have been cut off. The ballots were put into the custody of US soldiers, who also arrested thousands before the vote and stood guard at the polling places. Expectations had been lowered so far that the fact that Sunday wasn't another Hiroshima is being touted as a glorious day for democracy. What I think was Iraqi desperation is being proclaimed as courage--those who voted were hoping that just maybe it would be a way to get the occupiers out. Of course it was courageous to go to the polls. But the whole thing was an American-run sham, done with little direct press coverage or international observers. The results will be whatever Bush and Allawi want them to be, meaning however many people voted actually risked their lives for nothing.

The WSWS has more on the triumphalism in the media. Excerpts:
A central purpose of the mind-numbing media barrage is to overwhelm, confuse and intimidate public opinion, especially in the US. Even though, according to opinion polls, a majority of Americans oppose the war, those who are repelled by the destruction inflicted on Iraq and appalled by the lawless doctrine of preventive war are made to feel isolated and out of touch with reality. That, at any rate, is the aim of the media extravaganza.

At the very least, one is obliged to acknowledge that something good can come of an aggressive war, even one based on lies, and only those who harbor sympathy for the “terrorist” enemies of democracy can think otherwise. So we are told—by the “liberal” no less than the right-wing press.
...
The dishonesty of the Times is underscored by the flagrant contradiction between its post-election position and what it wrote just three weeks ago. On January 12, the newspaper published an editorial calling for a postponement of the election because it feared the vote would be largely boycotted by the Sunni population. This would, the Times argued, undermine the election’s legitimacy and possibly provoke “a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims,” an outcome that “everyone agreed had to be avoided at all costs.”

“The coming elections—long touted as the beginning of a new, democratic Iraq—are looking more and more like the beginning of that worst-case scenario,” the newspaper wrote.

The Times’s “worst-case” scenario of January 12 is essentially what transpired on January 30. The turnout in the largely Sunni areas of central Iraq was negligible. That, however, did not prevent the Times from hailing it on January 31 as a “heartening advance by the Iraqi people.”

What accounts for this about-face (which the Times does not bother either to acknowledge or explain)? There is really no mystery here. The election has happened, and the requirements of American imperialism in Iraq call for a corresponding adjustment in the line of the “newspaper of record.” All doubts have to be pushed aside for the greater good of sanctioning the election travesty and stupefying the American people.

This example of boundless hypocrisy serves to illustrate, once again, that the Times and the forces for which it speaks in the Democratic Party and liberal establishment fully support the war in Iraq. Whatever their differences with the Bush administration, they are of a tactical character. When it comes to crushing the Iraqi resistance and consolidating American control over Iraq and its oil wealth, there is virtual unanimity within and between the two parties, and within the ruling elite whose interests they jointly defend.
...
When it suits the purposes of US foreign policy, the American media is capable of voicing indignation over the violation of democratic principles. For example, Russia held a referendum at gunpoint in Chechnya in the spring of 2003, organized to rubber-stamp a constitution written by Moscow. The Russian military maintained its massive military presence throughout the process. The New York Times published an editorial in anticipation of the vote on January 14, 2003, entitled “A Sham Referendum.”

“The idea that a fair test of Chechen opinion can be carried out in the present climate of intimidation is ludicrous,” the newspaper declared. “Any government emerging from this flawed process is likely to be seen by Chechens as a band of Russian collaborators, not their own independently chosen representatives.... [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aim seems not to offer a real political opening, but a stage-managed show aimed at convincing the outside world that the Chechen war is over and no longer warrants international concern.”

How true such words ring, with the appropriate name changes, to describe the grotesque farce in Iraq!