I’m not dead, just busy & not feeling well.
Go Iraq! Glad something good has gone on after all the suffering, torture, and death we’ve inflicted on the people. Hope we have the good sense to get our troops the hell out of there sooner rather than later.
A lot of people are talking as if this somehow justifies the war, which is of course ludicrous, but you can’t blame them, after how badly things have gone, for trying to grasp any good thing that happens and use it to justify their support for a war whose original justifications all turned out to be lies, a war in which America disgraced itself in its pro-torture policies and lack of respect for the most basic international law, a war in which the statements of the Administration became indistinguishable from those of Rudolf Hoess at Nuremberg.
So, yeah, free elections in Iraq are a very good thing! Would that they were achieved by just, lawful, and decent means; would that they were not a product of such evil.
UPDATE: James in the comments below links to a story which points out that far from being the point of the invasion, and a justification for its violence, elections of this sort were opposed repeatedly and vehemently by the Bush Administration, and that they were forced into it by the nonviolent protests of many thousands of Iraqi citizens led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani demanding free elections. So it is the height of hipocrisy for pro-war, pro-Bush folks to portray this as a justification for the invasion — it happened because Bush relented in his plans in the face of nonviolent protest, not because Bush’s violent plans succeeded.
Lesson: Nonviolence can win and produce democracy even in the face of violence.
Bush deserves credit — for backing down and giving in to the will of the Iraqi people in this matter.