Iraq’s election

Apologies for yet another absence.

It was technical difficulties again – a strange virus attack that had someone using my machine to send huge amounts of data (perhaps spam?). By the time I cleaned my machine my operating system was irretrievably damaged.

And so, those of you who have been advising me over the past weeks to switch to Linux – you have your wish. I am typing this from my old computer with a new operating system. There will be a time to talk about this more – I am getting more interested in both the technical side of these things and their larger implications.

Apologies for yet another absence.

It was technical difficulties again – a strange virus attack that had someone using my machine to send huge amounts of data (perhaps spam?). By the time I cleaned my machine my operating system was irretrievably damaged.

And so, those of you who have been advising me over the past weeks to switch to Linux – you have your wish. I am typing this from my old computer with a new operating system. There will be a time to talk about this more – I am getting more interested in both the technical side of these things and their larger implications.

But first I think I should say a few things about Iraq’s elections. As usual, Rahul Mahajan’s blog has important things to say: ” The election is roughly as significant as voting for your city council in a country ruled by a dictator. The new government will not be allowed to go against U.S. wishes in any major way. It will have some small amount of autonomy, mostly in areas the United States doesn’t care about.”

There is also some interesting historical context on that blog about the phrase “Iraq’s first election in 50 years”, and a very interesting piece from the 1960s about a triumphant election in another place, a long time ago.

And yet, there’s no denying that a lot of people turned out, and even if the US will be hard at work subverting their will in the coming months, it is important to think about what it means that they came out in the numbers they did (probably not as high as the hype, as Phyllis Bennis points out, but still high). Phyllis points out that the whole thing is a major victory for Bush. That’s certainly true. But the people who voted didn’t do so to give Bush a victory, but to express and claim a measure of control over their own lives.

Bush and imperialism have won a major victory. The elections were not free. The legitimacy of the body that will emerge from these elections will be questioned because turnout was so different in different areas and communities, as Fisk points out.

But another thing that could be read into this vote that’s not quite the same as the triumphalism of imperialists is something that may yet haunt those imperialists. Under the dictatorship people lived in terror, as they do today under occupation. In optimistic moments I think that large numbers of people who were not allowed to be political actors under the dictatorship are becoming that now, in spite of the occupation, and will not return to passivity. The US will try to manipulate the situation and bring about circumstances that can lead to indefinite occupation – namely, civil war – but that’s not the only possible outcome. I have to believe that another outcome is possible as well – self-determination. The barrier to Iraqi self-determination is not passivity in Iraq though. It’s passivity here.

Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. Teach at York U's FES. Author. Writer at ZNet, TeleSUR, AlterNet, Ricochet, and the Independent Media Institute. View all posts by Justin Podur