The Iraq election is a sham

But then, Bush knows all about sham elections -- he's in office because of two of them.



International Herald Tribune:

Very early in the occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration recognized that a democratic Iraq, even a stridently anti-Saddam one, would not countenance the strategic U.S. goals the war was fought for: controlling the second-largest oil reserves in an energy-thirsty world, and establishing military bases required for undertaking the political transformation of the Middle East to serve American interests. A long-term occupation to secure these ambitious goals was no less tenable.



So even as the Americans proclaimed their mission as one designed to introduce democracy and human rights in Iraq, they fought against demands for early elections even from putative allies like the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They also maneuvered to put into place a self-governance and electoral plan that, through carefully circumscribed United Nations involvement, they thought would ensure that the hand-picked Iraqi leadership would enjoy some legitimacy, with the elections scheduled for Sunday providing an added boost of Shiite support.



But as this blood-stained election shows, the complete breakdown of this plan has been one of the most colossal U.S. policy failures of the last half-century. Indeed, this is not an election that any democratic nation, or indeed any independent international electoral organization, would recognize as legitimate.



For the only time in memory, electoral candidates are afraid to be seen in public and are forced to campaign from underground cells, with many afraid to even link their names to their faces in the media. There are no public rallies where voters might glean some information about candidates' positions. As one voter told CNN, he would prefer to vote for George Michael, since he knows more about the singer than about any of the candidates running for office.



[snip]



The wonder is that the United States, fully aware that holding this election would unleash an altogether new level of violence, chose to push ahead with what was bound to further destabilize the country and intensify hatreds that will take decades to heal.



The ultimate irony is that despite its enormous cost in human life, physical destruction and deepening hatreds, this election will in no way make life easier for the Americans, the Allawi dictatorship or Iraqis. That was the view of most Iraqi, Arab and Muslim analysts at a fascinating closed-door international consultation organized in the fall by the middle-of-the-road Oxford University Center for Islamic Studies. They argued at a minimum for the election's postponement.



At a time when even many developed sovereign governments cannot be trusted to hold free and fair elections without deep outside scrutiny, elections under hostile occupations should be forbidden, since they have no other purpose than to further entrench the occupier's interests.



It was clear to those of us in Baghdad right after Saddam Hussein's fall that no long-term American project there, let alone the brutish attempt to cow Iraqis through massive use of force in civilian areas, would succeed. The limited self-governance plan was particularly a non-starter because of the transparent control the United States exercised over the process in order to ensure the emergence of malleable Iraqi leaders.



In any event, virtually no Iraqis, not even those benefiting from the American presence, see the superpower either as a friend or as a promoter of human rights and democracy. Each U.S.-dictated self-governance milestone has therefore backfired, just like the current election has, generating wider support and bloodier attacks by an insurgency that has grown more effective in thwarting American ambitions.

Catastrophic success indeed. The "success" in Bush's eyes is that he convinced enough voters not to change horsemen in the middle of the Apocalypse. The catastrophe is in Iraq, and will only get worse.