Saturday, March 06, 2010
"Democracy" "in" Iraq
As if it's not impossible to hold a democratic election in a country under foreign occupation, and is it's not absurd to call an election "democratic" when thousands of people have been ruled ineligible to run (a practice rightfully denounced in Iran but actually initiated in Iraq by the United States), today the news is filled with stories about Iraqis voting in the United States (as they have before). One story featured a man who left Iraq 19 years ago. This undemocratic practice (imagine letting people who left California 19 years ago vote on our next Governor) was also initiated by the U.S., as a way of weighting the vote towards "Western-friendly" voters.
Incidentally, right-wingers in Israel have introduced similar legislation there, partly because they think it will add even more of a right-wing bias to Israeli voting, and also to give a little extra "insurance" against the possibility, however remote, that a one-state solution comes to be and they need more "Jewish" votes to overcome Palestinian votes.
