Who'd have thought we'd see this day?
Iraq has a Kurdish president. Jalal Talabani was sworn into the largely ceremonial post yesterday, and is expected to appoint Shi'ite Ibrahim Jaafari prime minister.
No doubt many Sunnis are regretting their ill-conceived strategy to "de-legitimize" Iraqi elections by boycotting them. The boycotters, unfortunately, received much encouragement in this folly from the Western left, who could not stop fretting and wringing their hands about whether an election could be legitimate in the face of a Sunni sit-out.
The attitude all along should have been, "Vote if you want to, and if not, fine, but don't complain about the results afterwards." In the end, the boycott was not terribly effective, but it certainly would have been less so had the Western doomsayers not lent so much credence to the idea.
Comments
The boycotters, unfortunately, received much encouragement in this folly from the Western left, who could not stop fretting and wringing their hands about whether an election could be legitimate in the face of a Sunni sit-out.
Really? Leftists were doing that? Because *I* was fretting and wringing my hands that the boycott was a waste of their time that would leave them out of the process altogether. Did I miss a memo? Was someone famous saying this and I didn't read them that week?
Posted by: OTTami | April 8, 2005 09:32 AM
I have some serious doubts that anyone living in Iraq listens to or even cares about our own silly internal politics.
And I'd have to agree that "Leftists" were not encouraging the Sunnis to drop out. The "Leftists" I heard were all either concerned that the Sunnis were going to disenfranchise themselves by not attending, or that they would be disenfranchised by the other two factions through sheer numbers of voters.
It's a popular myth that all on the left wanted this war to fail just to prove that the president was wrong. It's not true. I have always been opposed to the war but that doesn't mean I want my country to fail. Apparently that's a hard concept for some right-wingers to grasp sometimes.
I know Barry knows better, but even so you slip into that cycle every now and again to a certain degree. This post is one of those times.
Now I certainly won't deny that some on the left might have spoken as you mentioned, but they are nowhere near the majority. Just as extremists like local militia men other radical conservatives do not speak for the majority.
Generalizations are never a good idea.
Posted by: Godzilla | April 8, 2005 10:29 AM
To be clear, I don't think anybody here in the West was *hoping* for a boycott, nor do I think they actively encouraged it. I just think that fretting over it at such length perhaps reinforced the Sunnis' notion that such a boycott could, perhaps, successfully delegitimize the results.
Posted by: Barry N. Johnson | April 8, 2005 10:42 AM
I still doubt that the Sunnis were much concerned with any of the discussions we have on our cable talk shows.
Posted by: Godzilla | April 8, 2005 12:46 PM
Damn them! Are you serious? Next you'll be telling me they don't read this blog.
Posted by: Barry N. Johnson | April 8, 2005 01:15 PM
"Damn them! Are you serious? Next you'll be telling me they don't read this blog."
Um, yeah, probably not?
Posted by: K | April 8, 2005 05:20 PM