[BRIEF NOTE] On the Iraqi Elections
Feb. 2nd, 2005 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIt's good that the Iraqi elections went forward. Yes, there was rather a lot of violence, but that's no disqualification of them. As Kanan Makiya demonstrated in his chilling The Republic of Fear, the previous instances in which the general population of Iraq was mobilized politically all involved cathartic uses of indiscriminate violence: the popular massacres of the Assyrians in the 1930s, the pogroms against the Jews in the 1940s and 1950s, the various coups of the 1950s and 1960s starting with the extermination of the Iraqi Hashemite royals in 1958.
All said, hundreds of dead across the country during elections aren't terribly out of line with past precedents.
As I blogged this past March on Bonoboland, it seems like a majoritarian or pseudo-majoritarian ethos dominates Iraq, wherein the factions with the greatest claims to the authority of tradition, the tyranny of numbers, or the possession of small arms feel free to fight it out for total supremacy. A democracy that respects the civil rights of all? Far from being achieved.
All said, hundreds of dead across the country during elections aren't terribly out of line with past precedents.
As I blogged this past March on Bonoboland, it seems like a majoritarian or pseudo-majoritarian ethos dominates Iraq, wherein the factions with the greatest claims to the authority of tradition, the tyranny of numbers, or the possession of small arms feel free to fight it out for total supremacy. A democracy that respects the civil rights of all? Far from being achieved.
