We all know the expression, "When you have nothing good to say..."
Atrios - nothing
Daily Kos - nothing
Talking Points Memo - nothing
Political Animal (a peep about polls opening)
Blog For America - nothing
Burnt Orange Report - 1 post on polls closing, pessimism about "weeks worth of counting"
Talk Left - quotes a very negative excerpt from an Iraqi blogger: "
Our sources in the insurgency say the election will make no difference to them, so why expend a lot of energy?) Is the insurgency much weaker than previously thought? Or is the level of security sufficient to keep it in check? If that's the case, then that is discouraging, too, because the measures that have kept today safe (so far) are truly draconian. No driving, dusk to dawn curfews, states of emergency. If that's what it takes to provide security in Iraq, why erase one police state only to replace it with another?However, here's that same quoted blogger later in the same post:
4:56:55 PM Just got back from a couple of polling stations. Things have gone very smoothly, all things considered. Everyone out on the streets is happy, even the Iraqi security forces who will laugh and joke with journalists—the first time they've done it in months. I saw one American convoy patrolling around, but that was it. A few American choppers. But the promise to put the Iraqis front and center seemed to have been kept....
“It's the first time for the Iraqis to express their opinions,” her father said. “It's the greatest national eid (holiday) for us.”
A National holiday. Indeed!
UPDATE: Here are some more lefty blogs who are pretty much sour about the successful Iraqi election.
Oliver Willis - "You know, I really wish Iraq were having an honest, safe, real election. But that isn't happening, and that's a shame. " (I guess those millions of inked Iraqi fingers are nothing but a scam? - Koko)
Crooked Timber - NADA...wants to talk about Google instead. Whoopee!
1 comment:
There's always a "but" to everything, eh Nate? You can't credit some kind of success without a "but" in the process.
The professionalism was actually beyond anything but normal in this election. Professionalism is about ensuring people's safety so they can participate without fear or reprisals. The Iraqi police, Iraqi army, and coalition forces' professional display of protecting the Iraqi citizens was above and beyond the normal scope of any part of the election process. They had soldiers, tanks, and guns everywhere with snipers on roofs, helicopters and airplane drones with their night vision cameras at work. They set up security rings. Concrete barricades. Had curfew set up weeks before the election. Banned motor vehicles. All this took a prodigious amount of effort, planning and execution. Lack of professionalism? You must be completely daft.
Professionalism was ensuring that the Iraqis have every opportunity to vote. They had their chance and fear lost. The Iraqi citizens won. It's a start. A very BIG start. Democracy is a process, not an event.
Your blithe remark about "professionalism" smacks of a typical Liberal response in trying to find a crack in just about anything when most of the Liberals did not support the ousting of Saddam (of which he violated the cease fire agreement and UN resolutions umpteen times over) and to set Iraq free. Most Liberals would rather be happy (and blind to the fact UN's lack of professionalism) to let the UN do their job while the U.N. people were scamming the Food for Oil program all the while letting Saddam build (with winks and nods from the UN) his billion dollar (a fact already assessed by experts) palace in several areas of Iraq and let people starve and die from lack of food, poor medicine, unsanitary water, and disease where several hundred thousand Iraqis (mostly babies, kids and elderlies) died as a result of the Saddam's cruelty and UN inept and greedy minds.
If you want to talk about "professionalism" please direct that remark to the U.N. and Europe (notably France, Germany, Russia and China) for a change. Your "professionalism" remarked aimed at the Iraqi election, the people and forces who made it happen is undeserved...no thanks to people like you who don't think ahead before opening their mouths.
Have a good day.
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