Sunday, May 15, 2005

So much for that Iraqi "democracy" thing.


Over at Steve Gilliard's blog, we have Steve commenting on a recent NY Times piece, where the Times article opens with:

WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week.

Um ... huh? And just how does one, in this budding democracy, "give" more political power to another group? I thought that's what that recent vaunted election was all about -- letting the people decide who was going to be in charge. Apparently not.

Despite all the preening, self-congratulatory egotism from the right about the tremendous success of the purple-finger election, it seems that nothing's changed -- those in charge are just going to divvy up power the way they see fit.

What a shocking development. Who on earth would have seen this coming?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, yeah, but there are different democracy systems. At a current situation it looks like a) Shiite and Kurds will assign 1 voters out of 30 to Sunni regions of Iraq and b) voters assigned to regions would approve Sharia law.