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4.22.2003
And if This Doesn't Tickle You Pinko....? Communist Party sets up shop, publishes first newspaper in Baghdad From the Christian Science Monitor: Across town, Communist Party Central Committee member Adel Khaled voices a more politically astute viewpoint.Recently emerged from five years of underground organizing, he is clearly delighted by the bustle of activity in his makeshift headquarters as the committed and the curious elbow their way to a table piled with clenched fist posters and copies of the party newspaper. Instant Karma? United States ousts Saddam Hussein only to have the Iraqi people turn to the communist party? Somehow I doubt that was in the game plan of Misters Bush and Rumsfeld. Indeed I think they feel like they are going to be able to fly in the people from the Iraqi National Congress and declare victory. However from what I have read and heard nobody really knows what the INC really stands for. Jassem Hamed has set up a branch office of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress in the cramped reception area of a former Baghdad passport office that was burned, looted, and trashed. While his colleagues make tea in the courtyard on a fire fueled by passport records, he explains that he joined the party a week ago, and was given his responsibility because a cousin works as a bodyguard to INC leader Ahmed Chalabi. Which brings us to the million dollar question: How much democracy is the U.S. willing to allow in Iraq? What White House Press Secretary has to say: "The goals of a liberated Iraq, from the point of view about what type of government the United States seeks, is a democracy -- a country that welcomes different religions, that has freedom of speech, freedom to worship, a free press," Fleischer said. So that's it. From the point of view of the United States the Iraqi people get one choice, Democracy or else... we try it again? I think its pretty clear, at least to me it is, that the U.S. wants a system in place in Iraq that is modeled after its own. To the extent that this becomes a reality will determine the "success or failure" of the new government in Iraq. You can rest assured that the U.S. representatives in Iraq, Barbara Brodine and Jay Garner will be around to "help" the Iraqis if they ever stray from their chosen course. This may lead to some friction between groups that have a different future in mind for Iraq, most notably the Islamists, who have their eyes on a Islamic state that resembles Pakistan or Iran. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher : I think the people on the ground will have to sort them out to make sure that all groups get represented and represented fairly in this process. It's an ongoing process. It's probably an expanding process. And, I mean, just look at this. This is great. People are demonstrating -- some against the United States. People are forming political parties. People are putting out information. People are talking to each other in Iraq in a way they've never been able to do before in their entire lives. This is a wonderful thing and it is a process that we have some confidence with, that Iraqis talking to each other, talking about their own future with each other, they will be able to create their own future and it won't be dominated or hijacked by any given group because part of our job is to ensure that all Iraqis are able to participate. That last sentence makes me grin a little, we are there to make sure the political process doesn't get hijacked by any one group? I'm not sure I know exactly what that means but I can hazard a guess. I suppose it means that if the INC comes out and looks like its going to be the landslide winner we will hear "Clear victory for Democracy" or something along those lines. If however the Islamists start to look like they are going to dominate the new political climate in Iraq we might hear "... process has been hijacked by militant Islamists". So we will see how things play out in the near future. My personal feelings are that I certainly don't want the Islamists coming to power, and I'm indifferent to the Communists. I would prefer to see a pluralistic process come about with a Secular government. I would like to see a multi-party system with some form of parliament. Ideally this would come about not on the shoulders of some "leader" like Chalabi but from a real broad based political movement. But I am afraid that 12 years of crippling sanctions may have fueled a virulent form of nationalism in the Iraqi heart. What the Iraqis will have to wary of is their nasty tendency to nationalize their oil industry. Despite the claims by nearly everyone in the White House today that the oil of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq, I would not take that to mean that it belongs to them as a national industry, but rather it belongs to them if they let us in and drill for it. Lest we forget that two other Iraqi leaders have made the mistake of nationalizing the oil industry and they have both been "removed" by the same hand. Abdel Karim Kassem in 1963 and Saddam Hussein in 2003. We shall see won't we? | |
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