Frigging rigging

If precincts of Baghdad show a 124% turnout, we'll cry foul. When this happened in Ohio, the secretary of state certified the vote.

This is the "democracy" we want to export to the world. Well, I have no doubt it is. The kind of system where an entrenched power elite can retain its hold on power by whatever means is exactly what we want in the Middle East. The illusion of democracy helps smother dissent, and is useful so far as it goes.

It's what Karl Rove understands and the milksops surrounding the Democrats do not and cannot: what counts is winning, not how you play the game.

I'm not one for political predictions but I reckon the vastly unpopular Allawi will walk the elections in Iraq. I don't think they're using electronic voting, so they'll have to rig the election the oldfashioned way, by throwing the ballot boxes in the river and simply not counting the opposition's votes. What the Americans will not want to see is an expression of the people's will. Ironically, neither do the insurgents. It's one of the few things they could agree on.

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If you have a long memory, you'll recall that the last time we attacked Iraq, it was in the name of restoring "freedom" to Kuwait. We talked about fostering democracy there too. Kuwait does not have a democracy of course. Most of what we said then was untrue. The Iraqis did not trash Kuwait. They had in fact withdrawn by the time we arrived. Neither did they threaten Saudi Arabia. The divisions that were supposed to be massing on the Saudis' border turned out to be a mirage.

Our record in creating democratic regimes in the Middle East isn't brilliant. We supported the Shah -- a vicious, fascist dictator; the Sauds, bloodthirsty, ultraright dictators; Israel -- a racist state that, with American backing, has been able to ignore the opprobrium of the world as it subjugates its weak neighbour, colonising its land and killing its citizens; Bahrain -- a model of antidemocracy; actually, let's throw in all the Gulf states -- none has a truly representative government or, in most cases, even the pretence of one.

Afghanistan does not have a model democracy either. It had an election and now it has an elected leader whose writ still barely runs to the city limits of Kabul, let alone in the rest of the land. Our "friends" surrounding Afghanistan are not setting the standard either: Musharraf was empowered in a coup and has refused to hand over power to a civil government; the various ex-Soviet Muslimistans are filthy pits of murder, torture and ungovernable mayhem; Russia itself is a good example of what can happen when capitalists are allowed to run free and unchecked -- how could Roman Abramovich, who seems just to be friends with the right people, not a businessman or a "wealth creator" of any kind, become a multibillionaire? He seems to have simply been awarded half the state oil company in Siberia. No wonder he always looks utterly bemused when we see him at the football. He's probably trying to figure out how the fuck he got where he is.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:19 am