Iraqi elections cover up the crime

Touted as good news, the elections and turn-out in them in Iraq mean nothing while the occupation continues and death reigns

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

We're witnessing a digestive miracle: throughout Canada and the United States, people are swallowing buckets of bullshit without gagging. I'm speaking, of course, about the mainstream media's coverage of the elections for a transitional national assembly in Iraq.

Before we heap one more laurel upon the president's witless head, let's remember that the Bush administration didn't want these elections to occur at all. Over a year ago the Associated Press reported that "Al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite leader, has rejected a US formula for transferring power through a provisional legislature selected by 18 regional caucuses, insisting on direct elections instead.” In other words, the pressure for elections was applied by Al-Sistani, not George W Bush. The Iraqi people voted not in support of, but in protest against, the United States' involvement in their affairs. Polls conducted by the American government prior to the elections revealed that over 90% of Iraqis view the Americans as occupiers, and that less than 10% view them as liberators, positions expressed quite clearly in massive anti-American rallies held in Iraq since the invasion.

Despite Al-Sistani's laudable grassroots initiative, and despite the courage shown by the voters, the elections were hardly models of democratic process. Regardless of what we're hearing in the mainstream media, they resemble genuine democratic elections about as much as a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition match resembles a real basketball game.

Sources on the ground report that ballots were extremely confusing. The populace recognized few of the candidates because they were unable to hold rallies or debates for fear of violence. Some candidates were surprised to find out their names were even on the ballots. The highly-touted voter turnout of 72% turned out to be rather exaggerated; it appears that only 58% of voters showed up at the polls, which, however commendable in such dangerous circumstances, is hardly astounding. It doesn't offer any guarantees about the country's future, either. Voters in South Vietnam turned out in much higher numbers in a similarly celebrated election five months before the Tet Offensive.

On a more substantial level, it should be noted that truly democratic elections conform to international laws. Those laws prohibit an occupying power from making substantial changes to the political and economic structure of an occupied country. The occupiers in Iraq have imposed massive changes in the country's political and economic structure. Given this, how can the elections have any legitimacy?

Speaking of legitimacy, genuine elections have to be capable of bringing about changes in a country's political power structure. Whoever wins the Iraq elections, meanwhile, will have to operate within the constraints of legislation imposed by the occupying power. The coalition simply isn't going to allow the elected government to determine Iraq's destiny. As Noam Chomsky pointed out in a January 26 th presentation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a genuinely sovereign democratic Iraq would align its interests with those of the other Shiite-dominated state in the region, Iran.

A sovereign Iraq would also want to resume its long-held position as the premiere power in the Middle East, which would bring it into conflict with Israel. Iraq would need to re-arm itself, and would likely develop weapons of mass destruction rivalling Israel's. Such an Iraq would certainly oppose the presence of permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil.

Finally, an independent Iraq would want complete control over its foremost resource, its oil reserves. The United States and Great Britain simply won't tolerate any of these steps. Given this, Iraq seems little more than a penitentiary in which the prisoners have held elections to decide who among them will occasionally enforce the will of their guards.

But let's turn away from Iraq and consider what's being asked of us. The Bush administration and its shills in the corporate media would have us believe that so long as Western powers allow a subjugated people to vote in an election incapable of altering the real power structure under which they live, it's all right to use flagrant lies to invade a helpless and sovereign country in defiance of international law, kill over 100,000 of its people, maim and arbitrarily arrest and torture many thousands more, multiply its already horrific infant malnutrition and death rate, destroy its infrastructure, flatten its cities, establish permanent military bases on its soil, contaminate its land with depleted uranium shells, sell off its resources through privatisation schemes, shut down its dissident newspapers, and demolish its labour movement.

Some are all-too-happy to make a meal of this filth. After all, the Iraq war was beginning to threaten our self-image—and I do mean “our” self-image: Canada is a major arms supplier and trading partner for the United States. Our assistance in Afghanistan allowed American forces to focus their attention on Iraq, and Canadian conservatives like Ralph Klein beat the war drums as loudly as anyone south of the border. The aesthetics of our “War on Terror”—the well-raped detainees, the children covered in their parents' gore, the screams and the severed limbs—were becoming psychologically septic. Corporate greed may compel us to drown the streets of Baghdad with the blood of the brown, but God forbid we should be infected by shame over our actions. Many people are therefore using Iraq's elections as a ritual of self-purification. Now, they can piously proclaim that the people we're slaughtering are only sacrificial lambs offered to appease “Democracy”—a term that no longer refers to democratic process, but rather to some great and murderous abstraction, the Moloch of the modern age.

Dinner's been served. Some have eaten hungrily, and they'll soon ask for seconds. As for me, I haven't touched my plate. Someone, please, show me the way out of this restaurant.

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