INTERNATIONAL

A New Iraq?

Citizens turned out in a peaceful, transparent election. And they voted for change.

By Lennox Samuels | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 5, 2009

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  • Posted By: think4yourself @ 02/06/2009 4:23:58 PM

    Thank you President Bush :) Also Pres Obama is wrong he no longer has 2 wars he has only one now and that depends on what he wants to do. He does not have to go to Afganistan...

  • Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 02/06/2009 2:40:58 PM

    Hmm. So the lying LANCET report on US-caused deaths in Iraq has now been proven to be false. Its authors are now being subject to civil liability by the reports sponsors,Johns Hopkins University who poorly vetted the original 2004 ''study''. Ironically, as Bush is made the catalyst for an ''illegal war'',he also reaps the consequences of what can end up becoming a more stable large Middle Eastern nation.That which was ''broken''[Sec.of State Colin Powell],now appears to be on the mend,with Bush [and certainly the generals and the troops] enjoying a measure of vindication that ignores the fears of his critics in moving towards a thing which is unlike in totality,the Baathist creature it once was. The Iraqi people are not to be damned with faint praise,but with solid congratulations in trying to form their own imperfect union.

  • Posted By: tracker190 @ 02/06/2009 9:55:47 AM

    Effective Mayor of small towns = tribal war lord.

    • Posted By: kunino @ 02/06/2009 2:36:00 PM

      Well, DMoney got me on one point: I mistyped the word "flack".

      What I reported earlier didn't come from any blogs on the matter. it came from numerous press and TV reports. These don't disappear because DMoney hasn't seen them, and their facts have not been challenged by either the US or Iraqi government. The UN commission for refugees has a heavily stressed workforce supporting, feeding, etc, these post-US invasion refugees in Syria, Jordan and other nations.

      Following the US invasion, virtually all of Iraq's Christians fled the country, in defense of their faith -- and lives. There was no persecution of Christians before that.

      Refugees interviewed on television in recent years -- most made their first temporary residence in Syria, a Muslim country where Christians are still not persecuted -- report that they fled their homeland post-invasion because a) they were officially instructed to convert to Islam -- and wouldn't; b) in Romeo & Juliet style, they, Muslims, loved across Muslim religious lines and as a result were threatened with death; or c) they were targeted because they had helped the US invasion forces. These last ones are happy to present to TV cameras official letters of commendation from senior US military officials for their services. They seem to have been "thank you, drop dead"letters that would be virtual death sentences if discovered by local authorities back home.

      Political leaders back in Iraq are of course professing much less respect for the US occupying force than they cared to two or three years ago.

      DMoney also makes a strange and self-defeating argument in saying the current election was terrific in contrast with Ïraq's "very first election ... their truly first election ". What he's saying is that no election in Iraq is an election unless conducted under US auspices and military protection. A strange and untruthful idea. He or she rambles on to compare Iraq with Minnesota, a strange idea. Instead, imagine a situation in which the US held elections under occupation by some strong foreign military force. Then you have some idea of how "democracy" works in Iraq today. The real test of its strength will of course be how elections run after the Americans and their Coalition partners come home. My personal hope is that it will run well.

      There seems little reason to hope that the Iraqi refugees who fled because violent chaos erupted after the United States invaded their nation,will ever find safe haven in their former homeland again. Benign, ignorant and complacent musings about Iraq as the Minnesota of the Middle East seem ... well ... foolish and lazy. And, of course, contemptuous of the suffering. Such people are of course the natural victims of the flacks.

  • Posted By: smotpoker420 @ 02/06/2009 1:42:26 PM

    likewise..... good to hear somme good news for the middle east after years of terror somthing is bound to change...... or so we hope.

  • Posted By: wildechild66 @ 02/06/2009 12:31:52 PM

    I'm so glad to hear some good news out of the Middle East. Hopefully, now that Iraq is holding peaceful and transparent elections, they will be able to woo back their middle class and build a healthy nation. Oh, and you can't hand people freedom, likeitis. Any worthwhile, lasting change, cannot be imposed from the outside. Well done, Iraq.

  • Posted By: Iconoblaster @ 02/06/2009 11:32:34 AM

    There is nothing for Americans to "take credit" for in Iraq. The American invasion was unjustified.. it cannot be justified by the excuse the American government actually gave, since the factual basis of that excuse was demonstrably false; it could not be morally justified by the after-the-fact excuse of regime change, either, since that is not a lawful ground for military attack on a sovereign nation, either...and most of all, it cannot be justified because hundreds of thousands of innocent people were KILLED and MILLIONS grievously injured (loss of homes, of limbs, of loved ones, of sight, of sanity)...you may include among this number the thousands of American soldiers, sailors and Marines who died or were wounded trying to serve and defend their own nation, and were in Iraq on a false mission only on the misguided orders of others, considerably above their pay-grades.

    Yes, Iraq will probably be, now or eventually, better off than it was under Saddam's Baathists, but that wasn't OUR problem to begin with, and our "solution" imposed its worst costs on people who had no complicity in the Baathist regime. Saddam's government would eventually have fallen anyway; it wouldn't have endured as long as it DID without US government assistance it received (for example during the Iraq-Iran War). If the cost of OUR acting to unseat Saddam had been YOUR leg, or your life, or your loved one, you would not esteem the deal so highly.

  • Posted By: DMoney @ 02/06/2009 4:18:43 AM

    To Kunino: What an amazingly shallow comment which only you could love.

    When you mention one-fifth, where did you get that number? I have never read such a thing. I think you have been reading too many hate-filled blogs. If you refer to the one-fifth that fled Iraq when Saddam was butchering his people then I follow you. In fact, many Iraqis have come home since Saddam's fall, not left as you point out without proof.

    To your second point, the difference between Iraq's very first election - let me repeat, their truly first election and this new election, is that violence has gone down tremendously since then. Also, Sunnis are participating in this election which they did not in the first.

    Just think about this Kunino, Minnesota still does not have one senator due to politicaly nonsense. It seems Iraq has risen above that and is getting the job done.

    • Posted By: Sik&Tyerd @ 02/06/2009 10:43:20 AM

      Thars right, DMoney. Great comment

  • Posted By: theNANCE @ 02/06/2009 10:17:08 AM

    I bet that liberal bastard named Obummer who got himself ellected due to his "half breed color" will try and take the credit with one of his loud mouth crybaby speeches. He will destroy this nation in no time at all. He is a dirtball screw-up from the start. You idiots who voted him in will suffer for him in the end. You all will suffer when he destroys this country.

    • Posted By: Sik&Tyerd @ 02/06/2009 10:42:39 AM

      It would certainly be disappointing if Obama were to take credit for something that he had virtually no part of help create when, In fact, he was completely against. We'll shall see what he will say and where he puts due credit and then we will see what kind of a person our newly elected president is.

  • Posted By: DMoney @ 02/06/2009 4:18:25 AM

    To Kunino: What an amazingly shallow comment which only you could love.

    When you mention one-fifth, where did you get that number? I have never read such a thing. I think you have been reading too many hate-filled blogs. If you refer to the one-fifth that fled Iraq when Saddam was butchering his people then I follow you. In fact, many Iraqis have come home since Saddam's fall, not left as you point out without proof.

    To your second point, the difference between Iraq's very first election - let me repeat, their truly first election and this new election, is that violence has gone down tremendously since then. Also, Sunnis are participating in this election which they did not in the first.

    Just think about this Kunino, Minnesota still does not have one senator due to politicaly nonsense. It seems Iraq has risen above that and is getting the job done.

  • Posted By: kunino @ 02/06/2009 3:15:55 AM

    An amazingly shallow piece., and one that only a fack could love

    One-fifth of Iraq's population has fled as refugees in the past half-dozen years, and apparently few or none of them feel they would go home and live. Or vote. The US equivalent of this diaspora: 60 million Americans.

    The report also bypasses the fact that in october 2002, there was another extremely peaceful and open election in Iraq -- it voted a new term for Saddam Hussein. The US government then invaded the nation, overturned that government and created such a mess that here in 2009, it's actually news that Iraqis weren't shooting each other in the weeks leading up to election day.

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