Iraq elections: No end to nightmare
‘THE FIRST free vote for fifty years.’ That’s how the media described the
Iraqi elections. But how can a vote be ‘free’ when the whole country is under
military occupation by foreign imperialist powers? This so-called free vote
involved circumventing barbed wire, road blocks, tanks and armed soldiers, and
risking death, in many cases to end up voting for anonymous candidates.
Jenny Brooks
The occupiers and their stooge interim Iraqi government breathed a sigh of
relief that Shia Muslims and Kurds turned out in reasonable numbers, using it
to continue their propaganda that the elections are a turning point for the
better.
Much less was said about the very low turnout amongst the Sunni minority of
around three million people, who want to live in a unified Iraq but see only
further bloodshed coming out of the elections.
Those in the Shia population who voted also had limited expectations on
what will come after. Many said their main aim in voting was to try to get rid
of the occupation forces as soon as possible – every leading election
candidate had demanded a timetable for US withdrawal as part of their
manifesto. Nobody interviewed by The Guardian’s correspondents described their
vote as being against the insurgency.
Occupation
That the imperialist occupation is seen as the main problem is no surprise
when looking at the nightmare situation it has created. Even a Financial Times
editorial on 1 February pointed out: "For the past year Iraq has experienced
rampant corruption, without any state building or any effective security
forces".
A BBC reporter could not find a single Iraqi who thinks the situation is
better now than during the time of the repressive, hated dictator Saddam
Hussein.
And now these elections, far from ending the insecurity, poverty and daily
bloodshed, are set to worsen it, not least by fuelling further division
between the minority and majority populations. The Iraqi people are right in
seeing the US imperialist occupiers and their friends internationally as
mainly responsible for this.
The troops must come out and the Iraqi people allowed to decide their own
future!
- End the occupation. Withdraw the troops!
The spectre of the Vietnam war
IT WAS September 1967, at the height of the Vietnam war. The New York Times
carried a very optimistic article on the presidential elections held by the
puppet regime in South Vietnam. "US officials were surprised and heartened at
the size of the turnout" (83%), they said, "despite a Vietcong terrorist
campaign to disrupt the voting".
The New York Times said that US president Johnson saw a successful election
as "the keystone" in his policy of "encouraging the growth of constitutional
processes in South Vietnam".
US officials today would not be encouraged by the strange similarities with
the long-running war which they lost in Vietnam.
