Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Three And A Half Years Later...
folks, just finished my biz trip in nyc, and in the meantime the iraqi election has taken place and votes are being counted.
i believe holding this election and carrying it out is a major achievement for bush.
ex-pat iraqis have voted in good numbers via their embassys where possible. the percentage of people who were registered to vote in iraq and did so seems to be good too, 60% turnout is acceptable in most elections internationally.
perhaps none of this is utopia but it is a beginning. bush administration will be able to point to these days as a large achievement. bush has delivered the opportunity for the iraqi people to change their lives through the ballot box instead of through gunfire. though bullets and bombs are still a large basis of showing disatisfication in iraq, there can be no denying that bush has tried to give the iraqi people a different type of leadership.
i wonder if bin laden and his merry pranksters conceived that not even quite after 3 and a half years after he destroyed the world trade center that the taliban would no longer be in power, that arafat would be dead, and that democratic elections would have been held in palestine & iraq? even if he is a fanatic bin laden and his merry pranksters must feel rather ill with this knowledge.......
what exactly dont people get? i dont know what news the critics are watching, but the entire focus of many arab news centers, euro, and others are about the fact that elections were held and the world didnt come to an end.
this is a political earthquake in the middle east. people throughout the middle east are debating the merits of democracy, it will be hard to step back from here and to discontinue democratic reforms. you can be sure the leaders of saudi arabia, syria, and other locales are watching these events with nervous anticipation. there will be no hiding from their publics that something monumental has taken place.
the image of women holding up their purple dyed fingers and smiling at the cameras surely shakes the foundations of their national psyche to its limits. while we argue here about the implications of bush policy, this weekend will seen as one of the monumental moments when his policy became reality.
i believe holding this election and carrying it out is a major achievement for bush.
ex-pat iraqis have voted in good numbers via their embassys where possible. the percentage of people who were registered to vote in iraq and did so seems to be good too, 60% turnout is acceptable in most elections internationally.
perhaps none of this is utopia but it is a beginning. bush administration will be able to point to these days as a large achievement. bush has delivered the opportunity for the iraqi people to change their lives through the ballot box instead of through gunfire. though bullets and bombs are still a large basis of showing disatisfication in iraq, there can be no denying that bush has tried to give the iraqi people a different type of leadership.
i wonder if bin laden and his merry pranksters conceived that not even quite after 3 and a half years after he destroyed the world trade center that the taliban would no longer be in power, that arafat would be dead, and that democratic elections would have been held in palestine & iraq? even if he is a fanatic bin laden and his merry pranksters must feel rather ill with this knowledge.......
what exactly dont people get? i dont know what news the critics are watching, but the entire focus of many arab news centers, euro, and others are about the fact that elections were held and the world didnt come to an end.
this is a political earthquake in the middle east. people throughout the middle east are debating the merits of democracy, it will be hard to step back from here and to discontinue democratic reforms. you can be sure the leaders of saudi arabia, syria, and other locales are watching these events with nervous anticipation. there will be no hiding from their publics that something monumental has taken place.
the image of women holding up their purple dyed fingers and smiling at the cameras surely shakes the foundations of their national psyche to its limits. while we argue here about the implications of bush policy, this weekend will seen as one of the monumental moments when his policy became reality.
// posted by Zevchi @ 9:14 AM 
