Libertarian Leanings

Late commentary from Iraqi bloggers

The polls have been closed for nearly 12 hours now.  We're coming up on five o'clock Baghdad time on the morning of January 31, 2005.  The euphoria will be starting to wear off I imagine, and by the end of the week there will be a few people who will look back and say, "Did that really happen?"  But it did.  Things are different now.  Attitudes are different now.   Here are some of the Iraqi bloggers who had not weighed in by the time of my last entry.

Najma, The Star from Mosul, all of sixteen, viewed the voting with a mix of cynicism and envy.   She quotes Kin Hubbard, "We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate."  In Mosul voting is not so easy.

The streets are empty today, as usual.. A police car declaring the names of the school that we can vote in came twice in our street. We can hear explosions in the distance.

But in the end,

(UPDATE: Now I really am jealous.. Grandma, my aunt and my uncle voted today, they're all in Baghdad so it was easier for them..)

Hammorabi celebrates the birth of a new Iraq.

Great day!

It is the birth of freedom and democracy in Iraq!

It is a great festival!

Today only we may announce the victory!

Today we hit back in the heart of the terrorists and the tyrants!

Today is the day in which the souls of our martyrs comforted...

Our thanks go to George W Bush who will enter the history as the leader of the freedom and democracy in the recent history! He and his people are our friends for ever!

At this moment the voting closed and we will see the results then!

God bless Iraq and America.

Baghdad Dweller says they caught al Zarqawi in a disguise trying to get into one of the voting stations.  He has the picture to prove it.

It's Monday morning in Baghdad.

Iraqi determination

As I write this the polls are about to close in Iraq's first real election in 50 years.  Preliminary reports say overall Iraqi voter turnout was 72% and in some areas, 95%.  It would appear Ted Kennedy's eleventh hour bid to bolster terrorist morale has failed.  Says Senator Kennedy:

Error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Mindless determination doesn't make a better outcome more likely. Setting a firm strategy for ending the mission may not guarantee success, but failure to do so will almost certainly guarantee failure. Casualties are increasing. America is tied down. Our military is stretched to the breaking point. Our capacity to respond to crises and threats elsewhere in the world has been compromised.

The terrorists in his audience hear his message and they continue the fight.  But the reality is the Iraqi people have won this round. 

Suicide bombings at polling stations and rocket attacks have failed to prevent Iraqis turning out in larger than expected numbers to vote in national elections.

With a curfew in place, borders closed, and motor vehicle traffic restricted, millions of Iraqis went to the polls to continue the business of taking control over their lives and taking control of their government.  The security measures forced the terrorists into positions of high exposure if they hoped to stage any attacks.

In all but one case, militants were forced to use "human bombs" – men rigged with explosives rather than cars because of a driving ban imposed across the country as an election security measure.

The first free Iraqi election in a half century included women on the ballot and women in the voting lines .  Pride, joy, and determination mark the day.

Fathiya Mohammed, 50, proudly held up a thumb stained with the purple ink used to mark those who had voted.

"Am I scared? Of course I'm not scared. This is my country," said the elderly woman, dressed in a head-to-toe abaya, who voted in her neighborhood polling station in the small town of Askan, a mixed Sunni and Shia area.

"This is democracy," she added. "This is the first day I feel freedom"...

At a polling place in eastern Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman in a black ski mask tucked his assault rifle under one arm and held the hand of an elderly blind woman to guide her to the polls...

Across Iraq, joy broke out as the day went on. At one polling place in Baghdad, soldiers and voters joined hands in a dance.

At another Baghdad polling station, a small group ululated as Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a descendant of Iraq's last king, went to cast his vote. Ali leads a constitutional monarchy slate in the election.

Baghdad's mayor was overcome with emotion by the turnout of voters at City Hall, where he said thousands were celebrating.

"I cannot describe what I am seeing. It is incredible. This is a vote for the future, for the children, for the rule of law, for humanity, for love," Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters.

Iraqi blogger, Alaa the Mesopotamian voted and then posted his thoughts,  Suicide Bombers v. Suicide Voters.

I bow in respect and awe to the men and women of our people who, armed only with faith and hope are going to the polls under the very real threats of being blown to pieces. These are the real braves; not the miserable creatures of hate who are attacking one of the noblest things that has ever happened to us. Have you ever seen anything like this? Iraq will be O.K. with so many brave people, it will certainly O.K.; I can say no more just now; I am just filled with pride and moved beyond words. People are turning up not only under the present threat to polling stations but also under future threats to themselves and their families; yet they are coming, and keep coming. Behold the Iraqi people; now you know their true metal. We shall never forget the meanness of these bas…s. After this is over there will be no let up, they must be wiped out. It is our duty and the duty of every decent human to make sure this vermin is no more and that no more innocent decent people are victimized.

My condolences to the Great American people for the tragic recent losses of soldiers. The blood of Iraqis and Americans is being shed on the soil of Mesopotamia; a baptism with blood. A baptism of a lasting friendship and alliance, for many years to come, through thick and thin, we shall never forget the brave soldiers fallen while defending our freedom and future.

This is a very hurried message, while we are witnessing something quite extraordinary. I myself have voted and so did members of my family. Thank God for giving us the chance.

Mohammed and Omar at Iraq the Model declared with emotional elegance, "The people have won." 

Is there a bigger victory than this? I believe not.

I still recall the first group of comments that came to this blog 14 months ago when many of the readers asked "The Model?"… "Model for what?"  Take a look today to meet the model of courage and human desire to achieve freedom; people walking across the fire to cast their votes.

Could any model match this one!? Could any bravery match the Iraqis'!?  Let the remaining tyrants of the world learn the lesson from this day.

The media is reporting only explosions and suicide attacks that killed and injured many Iraqis s far but this hasn't stopped the Iraqis from marching towards their voting stations with more determination. Iraqis have truly raced the sun.

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants. 

I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

We've passed another milestone.  We can really see now, the tide has turned in favor of liberty.  The violence has not been put to an end today, but the courage of the Iraqis has shown the violence for what it is.  They've made it irrelevant.  Their determination has been largely ignored in the media and ignored by those creatures like Ted Kennedy, who seek political advantage or personal validation in the appearance of chaos.  Now the world has been shown Iraqi determination, and the terrorists had better pay heed.  Again, the words of Alaa the Mesopotamian,

"After this is over there will be no let up, they must be wiped out. It is our duty and the duty of every decent human to make sure this vermin is no more and that no more innocent decent people are victimized."

The War on Terror continues, and the Battle for Iraq is proving to be a turning point.  Prospects for peace in the Middle East continue their upward trend.  I believe we live in the most exciting times ever.

Teddy

New England Republican has little use for the senior Senator from Massachusetts. 

Ted Kennedy was rolled out yesterday to give a speech about Iraq. The gist of the speech states that we should pull out of Iraq. It is yet another example of why Democrats can not be trusted with the national security...

Can't say I have much use for him either.

Cheney in the Morning

On the morning of the Inauguration Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynn were guests on Imus In the Morning.  It was quite an interview and one that I wish I had gotten to hear first hand.  Here's a little bit of it:

IMUS: Do you and the president feel like you got your chain jerked on the weapons of mass destruction? I mean, everybody thought they were there.

R. CHENEY: Well, I think—I’m not quite as sharp in my judgment as others. Clearly, he had no stockpiles, and we were told he did have stockpiles, obviously by our intelligence. But he had a lot of other things. He had the technology, he had the people who’d done it before. If you read the Duelfer report in detail, he kept open labs and the intelligence service that were still doing ongoing research and so forth. And he clearly had the intentions, once sanctions were lifted, that he would go back—be back in business again. So I think all of that has to be calculated and what we had to look at as well too.

The other thing I’d say is, it’s intelligence. It’s intelligence that you’re collecting against a regime that’s doing everything they can to deny you information, and we had prior track record.

One of the things that I’ve always remembered was that, in the run-up to the ‘91 Gulf War, I was briefed, when I was secretary of defense, on the status of his nuclear program then. And we believed he had a nuclear program, but the estimate was that he was several years away from producing a weapon. We found out after we got into Iraq, in fact, that he probably was less than a year away from having a nuclear weapon. In other words, that time around, the intelligence community had underestimated how robust his nuclear program was.

And you’re never going to have perfection, you can’t have absolute certainty. If it was easy to do we could have a computer to make those decisions. The president has to make those decisions on the best information he has, and I think that’s what we did.

IMUS: I’m not trying to be self-effacing, but we really aren’t as sophisticated as, say, Brit Hume or Tim Russert or any of these people, but the original mission in Iraq seemed to be to prevent them from blowing up Cleveland. And then it became—and correct me if I’m wrong—and then it became to create this democracy there. So when did that—is that right— and how did that change?

R. CHENEY: Well, I can understand why some people have the view that it was all about WMD. That was part of the case because of his obvious track record.

The second key ingredient was the fact that he did have an association with terror.

IMUS: And you guys said it was about that, too.

R. CHENEY: Right. He was paying suicide bombers to kill Israelis, he’d hosted Abu Nidal for years in Baghdad. He’d supported the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And there was also evidence that he also had a relationship with Al Qaeda. There was debate with respect to how deep the relationship was, but George Tenet was on the Hill testifying that that relationship with Al Qaeda went back 10 years, to the early ‘90s, and there’s evidence to support that.

So there was this combination of a link to terror, as well as the track record with respect to weapons of mass destruction, as well as having started two wars, as well as having slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. And we had every reason to believe that if he were left to his own devices, that he would, in fact, again become a significant threat, not only to the region, but to others, including the United States.

And that was our assessment of the situation at the time, and I think it was valid.

Now, what happened the reason the WMD, I think, got so much notice was because it was a quantifiable, measurable kind of thing and when we got into the United Nations, it became the focal point of the debate. The resolutions that were offered, 1441, for example, that was approved in the fall of 2002, focused specifically on his failure to come clean on his weapons of mass destruction, which he’d been required to do by the resolution that he’d signed back in ‘91.

And that was an argument that you could have and you could get people on board and say, “Yes, that’s right; he’s never come clean.” But there were a lot of other arguments and reasons too.

MSNBC has the interview transcript on its website. It's worth reading all of it.  You can also listen to a replay of it here - for a while anyway.

The business of crime

Mass Backwards has this. 

A bank robber has been allowed to claim the £1,400 cost of the gun he used as a legitimate business expense.

Spare us please.

Historic debate

The first televised electoral debate in Iraq went forward just as Abu Mus’ab al Zarqawi declared holy war on democracy. Six principal Iraqi leaders appeared in the debate, broadcast live throughout Iraq by Alhurra Television.

Jawad al Maliki, representing the Iraqi United Coalition (al I’tilaf al Iraqi al Muwahad) emphasized the necessity of elections: “Those who called for it are larger in numbers. Those who wanted to postpone them feared the terrorists, and those who wanted to cancel them, are the terrorists,” he said. It’s worth noting that al Maliki represents an Islamist Shiia party. He concluded that elections are the beginning of the solution not the end of it.

Hajim Husseini, representing “Iraqiyun,” or the ticket “Iraqis,” said most Sunni Arabs are not boycotting. Instead, they are under terrorist threat. He added that after elections Sunnis will be integrated into the national government..

Dr. Adnan Pashaji, a Sunni leader from the dimucratoyeen al mustaqileen, or the “Gathering of Independent Democrats,” did admit to having political reasons for calling for the postponement of the elections. He hoped he would convince more of his community to participate. .

Dr. Ibrahim Salih of the Tahaluf al kurdistani, or “Kurdistani Alliance,” reminded the viewers that elections are not happening in an ideal situation. “We are facing international terrorism and the former regime forces. The main Iraqi leadership decided to go for elections to move forward, but there will be mechanisms to absorb those who won’t be able to join us, including a referendum next November.”.

Qassim Daoud of the al Qai’ma al Iraqiya or “Iraqi ticket,” said elections are needed to establish a national authority..

Hamid Majid Musa, representing Ittihad al Shaab, or “People’s Union,” strongly supported the holding of elections. Expressing the aspirations of most liberal forces in Iraq, he said elections now are better than no elections.

The entire article...

Rice confirmation debate

Here's the real deal on the loud complaining by Senate Democrats.  It's the reason there's any debate at all on the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.

Republicans also noted that Boxer -- whom Rice accused of unfairly challenging her credibility at the Foreign Relations Committee's two-day hearing last week -- recently issued a fundraising letter for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that said Republicans "didn't count on me to ask the tough questions" of Rice. Rice spokesman Jim Wilkinson said the letter "puts to rest any doubts some may have had that this is all about politics." Confirming a secretary of state, he said, "was designed to be a constitutional duty, not a political fundraising opportunity."

I think Republicans can always count on Boxer to be a lefty wing nut.  No surprise there.

Number Three spits out the dust

In a moment of pessimism I gave it up for dead, but it stirs from its coma.  Let me explain.  Number Three in my Top Ten for 2004 was the death of Yasser Arafat - not that his death was important in itself.  No. Arafat was the main obstacle to peace between Palestine and Israel.  The importance of his death was that it was the removal of an obstacle to peace.  It presented a hope, but things looked pretty bleak for a while.  Palestinian terrorists initially stepped up their attacks, and it appeared that hope for peace was only that - hope.  But now things have quieted down.  Here's what they're saying over at the New York Times.

Could the Palestinians finally be figuring out how to get what they want...

Unlike his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, Mr. Abbas is cracking down on violence. He has ordered Palestinian security forces to fan out in northern Gaza to prevent militants from firing their homemade rockets and mortars at the Israelis. He has called such attacks "useless," and urged Palestinians to stop their intifada against Israel, which anyone with good sense knows has hurt the Palestinians even more than the Israelis. And Mr. Abbas is now negotiating with groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. He is apparently closing in on a commitment from Hamas and Islamic Jihad for a monthlong truce.

It's the same at Haaretz.

Now along comes Abu Mazen, and he has already shown in his first week in office there is another way. His declarations condemning the armed intifada were not mere opposition whining but a firm worldview, which is now being translated into policy. Suddenly, it turns out that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad can be persuaded to stop the Qassam and mortar fire, even without an Israeli quid pro quo. Suddenly, it is possible to deploy the Palestinian security forces and order them to stop rocket fire. And suddenly, it appears that the calls to replace Arafat were not merely an Israeli excuse to continue the occupation and the settlements.

The Moscow Times talks about Abbas' crackdown on lawlessness. 

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- New President Mahmoud Abbas put teeth into his vow to crack down on lawlessness in Palestinian areas on Tuesday as bulldozers began demolishing buildings illegally built by militants and security men on public land.

Bulldozers swung into action in northern Gaza where 2,000 security forces deployed under Abbas's orders to prevent militant attacks on Israelis to help him revive peace talks. A de facto cease-fire has held in the region for a week.

Abbas, who on Monday ended a week of talks with Gaza militants in which he secured a sharp drop in violence although no formal truce, ordered the demolitions after touring the area and finding much rogue construction on public land.

Orders to remove such buildings had been ignored in the last years of Yasser Arafat's leadership in which militants, many linked to lawless elements of security services, took over the streets.

Hundreds of Palestinian policemen were deployed to protect the Palestinian Authority bulldozers as they started razing private buildings erected on public property in Gaza City.

More than just hope, there is reason for hope.

Afterthought:  I found it an odd piece of irony that there are Palestinian Authority bulldozers seeming to take over where the Israeli bulldozers left off.  I doubt we'll see any protesters trying to stand in front of them.

Moore and the Oscars

Gee, tough luck Mike.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Moore's attempt to turn voters against President Bush failed and on Tuesday he lost his gamble as well for a coveted best-picture Oscar nomination for his incendiary documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The omission from the coveted category marks a major misfire for the liberal firebrand who withdrew his anti-Bush polemic from contention in the documentary category, which he won two years ago with "Bowling for Columbine," in order to focus on the big prize. No documentary has ever won the best picture Oscar.

Moving closer to election day

Ralph Peters presents an optimistic view of progress towards the Sunday elections in Iraq.  Here are a couple of passages from his New York Post editorial column entitled Breakthroughs.

Under pressure, men and women reveal their true character. On the run and frantic, Zarqawi offered a perfect contrast to President Bush's inauguration speech supporting global freedom: Zarqawi announced that democracy is "an evil principle."

Then this:

Lecturing the enthusiastic voters of Iraq that democracy is evil, then calling the revered Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani "Satan" for supporting the elections.

This is not sound politics. A Sunni Muslim, Zarqawi can only mobilize the Shi'a voters he fears by attacking their spiritual leader.

But then Zarqawi has made one blunder after another in the face of wide spread support for Sunday's election. Indeed, while he and the other terrorists have played checkers, the Shi'a majority has been playing chess.

For example, key Shi'a religious leaders wisely agreed that Iraq's first free elections should not replicate Iran's mistake of putting mullahs atop the government. That keeps the mullahs off the blame-line, should governmental efforts falter, while still allowing religious leaders a voice behind the scenes (an authority that men of God enjoy from Indiana to India). It calms Western fears of a "second Iran" emerging in Iraq and so reduces the chance of a confrontation between the Coalition and the mullahs.

This isn't deviousness. It's statesmanship. We may live to be disappointed in them, but Iraq's Shi'as are confounding all the Western elitists who insist that the yokels aren't ready for democracy.