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January 31, 2005
More afterglow
Still basking in the afterglow of the Iraqi election. Previous Afterglow post here.Europe is cautiously optimistic, and almost sorta maybe willing to admit it might have been a little wrong, maybe.
If you want a sneak preview of all the different kinds of spin that will be attempted to delegitimize these elections, check in on Jeff Jarvis' comments. They're all there. And Mark Steyn fisks most of them in one column. Christopher Hitchens handles one of the others.
Michael Ledeen and Jonah Goldberg fisk Juan Cole.
Glen Wishard notes a long list of doom-mongers.
An honest and very partisan man decides to see for himself. He takes public transportation for 2 hours in the snow to visit an Iraqi polling center in the US. He talks to some Iraqis. He starts to question. What impresses me is that he lets the humanity of the Iraqis speak to him and inform him, rather than starting with an arid brittle abstract ideology and trying to impose that on them:
He spoke carefully and slowly, in very subdued tones as I interviewed him, like someone emerging from shock. The skin around his eyes was a hundred years old, like the trauma that had passing through his retinas had burnt the skin around them and somehow weakened the strength of the tissue itself.Commenters are welcoming him to the Dark Side (perhaps a bit too heartily, which might scare him off).. . . Why do I think that [another Iraqi's] statement applies a little more broadly than just losing ten pounds for bikini season? Because when he said it, I could feel the pain this guy has been through to do what he believes is right. I told him that I was no supporter of the Bush administration, but knew that I did not have the full story.
UPDATE: Some irregularities in Mosul.
Stats and a map from the Times on election turnout.
Interactive site on the election, with photomontages and voiceovers from reporters, overviews of several political parties, and maps showing distribution of terrorist attacks.
Stepping Out of the Tar Pit - David Brooks on the elections.
Juan Cole's most dedicated fisker returns to the task. (He's not happy with John Burns either.)
UPDATE: Fouad Ajami interviewed about the elections. Interesting bits on the reactions of the Arab press, and how complex Iraqi politics are going to be (in a good way). This post at Redstate gives an idea of how complex. For example, Sistani's group doesn't want to be Iraq to be another Iran, but they don't want to emulate Turkey either.
UPDATE: Lt. Smash and Jeff Simmerman (of the Iraqi polling center visit) correspond.
Judith | 01/31/05 at 08:21 PM | Categories: - Nation-building
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Blogs which link to More afterglow:
» Democracy, Whisky, Sexy! from Kesher Talk
Congratulations to Iraq on another successful nation-wide experience of determining their future by voting and arguing and compromise, rather than violence, in the face of enormous unrelenting provocation. You are a shining inspiration to the rest of t... [Read More]
Tracked on October 16, 2005 02:41 AM
