WSWS responds to complaints about Iraqtion coverage

Somewhat surprisingly, I haven't gotten any hate e-mails regarding my negative attitude towards last Sunday's sham election in Iraq (the Iraqtion). Probably just means that no freepers are checking on this site anymore. But the World Socialist Web Site, which I have quoted at length about the Iraqtion, has gotten some negative comments, if not exactly hate mail. They have posted some of these e-mails along with a thoughtful response, followed by the usual "workers of the world unite" rhetoric. Here's the core of their argument:

Numerous polls have shown 80 percent or more of Iraqis favoring the withdrawal of all US occupation forces from their country—which is why this question was not on the January 30 ballot. However, a number of parties—including the Shiite-backed United Iraqi Alliance, which is expected to poll a plurality, if not a majority of the vote—did demand an end to the US military presence in the run-up to the election. As a consequence, many of those who turned out at the polls did so in the belief that the election of an Iraqi assembly would lead rapidly to an end to the American occupation.

Yet the Bush administration touts the election as a vindication of that very occupation, and will undoubtedly use the vote as the justification for an even bloodier counterinsurgency campaign.

To hold elections under military occupation represents, in the final analysis, the continuation and deepening of a war crime. It is a blatant violation of international law. The 1907 Hague Convention, the basic law governing the conduct of occupying powers, expressly prohibits the occupiers from imposing any permanent changes in the form of government and laws of the occupied territory. The government that emerges from the January 30 election will be no more “sovereign” than the Quisling regimes established by the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War Two.

The US occupation dictated the rules of the election, and has already imposed a state structure that leaves key levers of power in US hands. US “advisors,” who take their orders from the fortified US embassy complex in Baghdad, have been installed in every government ministry, exercising effective control over all aspects of policy. The Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) imposed under Washington’s former colonial proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, remains the law of the land, and can be changed only by a two-thirds vote of the new national assembly, together with the unanimous support of the three-member presidency that this assembly will choose.

This setup, requiring a two-thirds majority for any significant decision, is designed to allow Washington the greatest possible leverage in exerting its control. It means that a minority—such as the forces around US puppets like Iyad Allawi—will be in a position to block any legislation not to the liking of their American patrons.