Legitimacy Versus Informed Comment Oxblog asks whether Juan Cole's latest post on Iraq counts as informed comment. Cole said: I'm...
Legitimacy Versus Informed Comment
Oxblog
asks whether Juan
Cole's latest post on Iraq counts as informed comment. Cole said:
I'm just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage of the
so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday. I said on television last week that
this event is a "political earthquake" and "a historical first
step" for Iraq. It is an event of the utmost importance, for Iraq, the
Middle East, and the world. All the boosterism has a kernel of truth to it, of
course. Iraqis hadn't been able to choose their leaders at all in recent
decades, even by some strange process where they chose unknown leaders. But
this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated
by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more
democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan.
How's that again?
| Juan Cole as quoted by himself | Juan Cole as quoted in Reuters |
| I said on television last week that this event is a "political earthquake" and "a historical first step" for Iraq. | "These elections are a joke," said Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan. "The Bush administration has created the worst possible advertisement for democracy because the perception across the Middle East is that democracy means you get a country where everything is out of control," he said. |
Then he tells this story.
Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed
one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn
Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur
in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to
have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow
massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members
of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to
this small, elite group.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan
and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution.
Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and
opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go
along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into
the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter,
Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was
apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a
factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to
January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse
chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the
elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration
cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly
what they did.
Salim Lone, the director of communications for Sergio Viera de Mello has
another version of events, which he tells in the Guardian.
In Lone's version, the Interim Governing Council (full title Iraq
Interim Governing Council), which in Cole's narrative was unleashed by
Bremer on Sistani, was actually the brainstorm of "the late Sergio Vieira
de Mello".
In its search for greater legitimacy for its preferred Iraqi leadership,
the US has avoided the UN security council, since most of its members abhor
what is being done to Iraq. The US has instead chosen to work with individual
representatives. The first such UN involvement, when the late Sergio Vieira de
Mello headed the UN mission in Iraq, was the most effective. He was able to
persuade the then US proconsul, Paul Bremer, that he should appoint an Iraqi
Governing Council rather than an advisory body. Even then, the anger about
the individuals and groups on this council, and for UN support for it, was
palpable in Iraq.
Nearly a year later, in another bid for UN support, Bush assured the world
that the interim government would be picked by Lakhdar Brahimi, Kofi Annan's
special representative. Brahimi spent weeks in Iraq consulting domestic groups
about who they felt should lead the country. But on the day the interim
government was to be appointed, a deal was struck by the Americans behind
Brahimi's back, to make the CIA-linked Ayad Allawi prime minister.
Lone's main beef is that America reneged on the arrangement that "the
interim government would be picked by Lakhdar Brahimi, Kofi Annan's special
representative". And who was sent to do the picking? Was it someone the
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who Cole says possessed the power to make or break
the White House would likely respect? Annan had sent Lakhdar Brahimi, who PBS
describes as "a Sunni Muslim, Brahimi ... with decades of experience as an Algerian diplomat."
Not to put too fine a point on it, according to a contemporaneous New
York Times article by Edward Wong, Brahimi was there to "pick a
secular Sunni politician to be president of the interim government ..."
So the helpless President George Bush, in the Cole version, submitted to
Sistani's fatwa with the mansuetude he should have displayed from the
first. Only this submission, according to Salim Lone's perspective, was a
mistake, because by allying themselves with Sistani, America had yoked itself to
a sectarian enterprise that will only deepen the hatred most Arabs and Muslims
feel for America.
The millions of Iraqis, as well as the UN electoral team and the Iraqi
election commission staff, who did participate in the process despite the
grave risk, deserve our respect. But it was a risk taken in vain. The election
was illegitimate, and cannot resolve the rampant insecurity resulting from the
occupation. The only way to stop the destruction of Iraq is to end the
occupation and enfranchise the Sunnis, who are leading the resistance because
they see the US as systematically excluding them from the role they deserve to
play in Iraq. ...
The US has little popular support in the country. It has, however, won the
support of the extremely influential Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who tolerates
an occupation most of his followers hate, with the single-minded sectarian
goal of having the majority Shia at the helm of power in Iraq. The occupation
has destroyed Iraq and is destabilising the world by exacerbating the deep
animosity that most Arabs and Muslims feel for the US. The Bush administration
is now provoking the Muslim world by threats against Iran. The rest of the
world looks on, mostly helplessly.
I'm feeling better already.
COMMENTS