Christopher Hitchens, of all people, has a good roundup of the Ohio voting machine irregularities. He’s such a contrarian.
Category: Politics
The United Iraqi Alliance/Kurd talks are not going well. I’m saddened, if not surprised. While it’s certainly not unprecedented to have no clear winner a month after polls close, there’s no sign of the deadlock lifting. I suppose we’ll see what happens in three days.
For all the talk about how the Iraqi election was the first domino, and about how recent events in Syria and Egypt are more dominos falling, I can’t help but wonder if the dominos represent democracy. Populism? Almost definitely. The ability of the people to force regime change? Sure. Newly found bravado for Shiites throughout the Middle East? Hm.
There are pro-democracy protests in Lebanon, but right now, the Shiite protests are larger. It’s good that the Saudi government is loosening up, but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that protests in Saudi Arabia are likewise Shiite-driven.
We’ll find out, one way or another.
Day 34: Still no government in Iraq. The problem remains the same as it was the day after the election results were announced; the United Iraqi Alliance doesn’t have a 2/3rds majority by itself, the Kurds aren’t willing to form a coalition unless they get Kirkuk, and Allawi’s faction isn’t big enough to form a majority with the Kurds.
Allawi has been pressuring the UIA in an effort to pull away enough votes to get a majority. Sistani, who backs the UIA, is lobbying against that and will probably succeed in holding the line. The Kurds are claiming their issue is with the possibility of an Islamic state; this is a problem for them but Kirkuk is really the key bargaining point.
The problem is that once a Prime Minister is selected, he or she has the ability to run the country without the coalition if he has a simple 50% majority. Thus, there’s no good way for the UIA to guarantee anything to the Kurds if the Kurds don’t trust them. The UIA has a 50% majority; a Prime Minister from the UIA could rule without Kurdish help once the Kurds has voted him in.
In any case, the Parliament is meeting in 10 days, with or without a coalition. Should be interesting to see what happens.
On the other hand, Scalia’s further comments on the display of the Ten Commandments are wrongheaded. His appeal to majority opinion is not only Constitutionally unsound — there is no question that the Constitution establishes the country and the laws thereof based upon the consent of the governed, and a strict constructionalist should not assert that the Constitution and our laws are derived from God — but poorly argued. He says “The minority should be tolerant of the majority expressing its belief that this government comes from God.” Perhaps so, but the government is not an instrument to express majority views. The majority of the country voted Republican in this last election; that does not mean the government is empowered to place displays extolling the virtues of the Republican Party in courthouses.
And it surprises me, really, that such a profoundly intelligent man could be so casual about ignorance: “probably 90 percent of the American people believe in the Ten Commandments and 85 percent couldn’t tell you what the ten are.” But perhaps it’s contempt for the groundlings.
Helpful hint to the legions of Democratic strategists who read this (I hear I’ve got a huge following in — no, wait, that was my stomach rumbling):
When Scalia says that there’s no material difference between legislative proclamations invoking God’s name and putting up the Ten Commandments, he’s (intentionally or not) setting up a trap. He’s absolutely correct, too. I’ve written about this before; Cambridge City Hall has a keystone which explains that the Commandments are the source of the law and which is just as religious as anything Roy Moore did.
So if you say “Yes, thus those legislative proclamations should be banned as well,” you wind up pissing off people who are serious about their Christianity. Should they be pissed off? Enh, it’s a fruitless argument. What is true is that they will be, and once again the Democrats wind up getting framed as the anti-religion party.
On the other hand, if we instead say “There’s nothing wrong with paying our respects to religion in the public space,” and start lobbying for Islamic, Jewish, and Buddhist images and writings to go side by side with the expressions of Christian religion — you still piss some people off, but you put those people in the position of having to be the ones who say “No.” Nobody likes a nay-sayer. “Geeze, buddy, you got something against Buddhist pacifists?”
Heck, start smaller. I think that Roy Moore used the Catholic Ten Commandments, but that seems a little biased. I think if we’re going to put the Ten Commandments up, we should try to put up multiple versions. Hopefully we can respect Catholics as much as we respect Protestants.
I don’t mean any of this ironically. I don’t think a little religion in a public space is a bad thing. I think that religion in the service of greed and personal power is a bad thing, and it’s important to figure out what it is we’re worried about before running off and protesting everything.
Final tally: around 58% of eligible Iraqi voters voted. My definition of success was 60%, so that’s a near miss. It’s close enough so that I don’t feel comfortable saying Bush missed that metric, but I wouldn’t say he succeeded either.
The ruling coalition needs 184 votes to reach a 2/3rds majority. The United Iraqi Alliance can reach that easily with the Kurdish parties, and fall just short if it teams up with Allawi’s Iraqi List. That means, in practice, that the UIA can form a weak ruling coalition with Allawi and a strong one with the Kurds. The price of doing business with the Kurds is a mostly independent Kurdish north, possibly including Kirkuk.
Turkey may or may not be willing to put up with that. Turkey also may or may not be able to practically do anything about it, but since the government of Turkey quite accurately sees an independent Kurdistan as a threat to the stability of Turkey, I wouldn’t rule out Turkish troops moving into Iraq. Somewhat alarmist, yes; still, it’s their country and they’ve had Kurdish rebels for decades. Under the imminent threat doctrine, Turkey has the right to take action.
That fact makes me suspect that the UIA is going to go for an all-Shiite coalition along with Allawi. Sistani isn’t dumb; he knows how Turkey would react. On the other hand, that risks pushing the Kurds into rebellion along with the Sunnis. And while the Sunnis have the advantage of access to Saddam’s old weaponry stockpiles, the Kurds have half of Iraq’s natural resources. Touchy situation.
OK, so Guckert got his press pass as a representative of GOPUSA. Apparently GOPUSA is not linked to the Republican Party and thus their reporters can get credentials. Fair enough; I’m inclined to think that we want fairly lax standards for who can get into the press room and ask questions. More people asking questions is good.
However, if The Raw Story and BuzzFlash and, hey, even Daily Kos aren’t currently applying for daily press passes under the excitingly loose guidelines for accreditation — well, I don’t know what they’re waiting for.
Hm. Looks like the Iraq election turnout numbers may be somewhat lower than first reported. Apparently the official number is 60%. Developing, as they say.
For some reason, Glenn Reynolds is very interested in the Volcker Report, which implicates the UN in corruption involving Iraq’s food for oil program, but hasn’t said a word about CNN’s report that the US condoned Saddam’s oil smuggling.
About that election — I gotta say, it looks like it went better than I thought it would. The final results won’t be in for another week or two, but the preliminary indications look solid in terms of turnout, and I’m glad for that.
In retrospect, I should have specified the necessary turnout for each major ethnic segment of Iraq; the biggest problem I see going forward is that the Sunnis stayed away in droves. I’m hearing 20% turnout. That rekindles my worries about civil war in Iraq; a lot depends on whether or not any Sunni parties are included in the governing coalition. No party won a 2/3rds majority, which is the majority needed in the National Assembly to elect a President, so there will be a coalition. Who will the members be? That’s the big question.
Meanwhile, Turkey is still nervous about the Kurds. If the coalition winds up including the major Kurdish party, chances are that the price will be more Kurdish autonomy. Turkey would really hate that.
And, finally, it’s worth remembering that Sistani continues to be the big winner in Iraqi politics. He’s the reason they’re having elections now, rather than a complex series of regional caucuses out of which would come a constitution. Also, the Shia alliance is endorsed by him personally. He’s clearly the key political figure in Iraq at this point. Hope he stays healthy.