Knock the vote

Abu Musab al Zarqawi isn't the one who's singing the blues about the historic election just ended in Iraq.

Here are some other dissident voices of note.

Ted Kennedy:

Sunday’s election is not a cure for the violence and instability. Unless the Sunni and all the other communities in Iraq believe they have a stake in the outcome and a genuine role in drafting the new Iraqi constitution, the election could lead to greater alienation, greater escalation, and greater death—for us and for the Iraqis.

Aljazeera:

Iraq elections will take place as scheduled not because this is the ideal option to restore the country's security, stability and political process, but because it suits the interests of certain local and international forces.

Fareed Zakaria:

No matter how the voting turns out, the prospects for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim. Unless there is a major change in course, Iraq is on track to become another corrupt, oil-rich quasi-democracy, like Russia and Nigeria.

Robert Fisk:

Yes, I know how it's all going to be played out. Iraqis bravely vote despite the bloodcurdling threats of the enemies of democracy. At last, the US and British policies have reached fruition. A real and functioning democracy will be in place so the occupiers can leave soon. Or next year. Or in a decade or so. Merely to hold these elections—an act of folly in the eyes of so many Iraqis—will be a "success."

Frank Rich:

Jan. 30 is here at last, and the light is at the end of the tunnel, again. By my estimate, Iraq's election day is the fifth time that American troops have been almost on their way home from an about-to-be pacified Iraq. The four other incipient V-I days were the liberation of Baghdad (April 9, 2003), President Bush's declaration that "major combat operations have ended" (May 1, 2003), the arrest of Saddam Hussein (Dec. 14, 2003) and the handover of sovereignty to our puppet of choice, Ayad Allawi (June 28, 2004). And this isn't even counting the two "decisive" battles for our nouveau Tet, Falluja.

Patrick Basham (The Cato Institute):

[The elections] are premature and ill-advised … and therefore they are going to primarily serve the purpose of disenfranchising the Sunni minority, which will, I fear, create a situation in which an initial election may produce a stillborn democracy.

The Baltimore Sun:

Flawed is altogether too mild a word to describe this Sunday's Iraqi elections. Crazy might be a better fit; how else to account for an exercise in democracy in which candidates are being urged to keep their identities a secret, and not to move around outdoors? The violence continues apace with no signs that it will decrease before the voting—or after the voting, for that matter.

Pepe Escobar (Asia Times):

The US administration of George W Bush, parts 1 and 2, has introduced to the world the concept of election at gunpoint. The guinea pig: Iraq, on January 30. The rules: candidates must be anonymous (otherwise they will be killed). Voters cannot go out and vote (otherwise they may be killed). Even if they wanted to vote, they wouldn't know where, because the location of the polling stations will be known only the night before the election.

Ted Rall:

There is no democratic process in Iraq. Iraq is occupied by 150,000 U.S. troops. The Baath and other parties are proscribed from participating in elections or holding public office. In a real democracy, voters are free to choose from any party. In a real democracy, a foreign occupation force does not exert any political influence whatsoever. And in a real democracy, people aren't afraid to venture out into the streets, risking rape or kidnapping in order to vote. You can't have democracy without basic security, period. So this is not democracy.

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. Even if you were and are opposed to this war, as I am, you would wish the Bush people would do things right just for the simple reason that it would help our standing in the world. But they can't even do that. Instead, we get a made for the media moment, then the cameras will go away and it will be 9/10 all over again, ripe for the next Bin Laden and ready for another Republican president idling his time away on vacation.

Hossein Derakhshan:

On the one hand I'm really excited that Iraqi people have been able to start the path to a potentially democratic political system, on the other hand I'm really upset that this will embolden neoconservatives and will be seen as a confirmation of their dangerous plans for the world.

Armando (The Daily Kos):

This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures. Why? Because Elections are to choose governments, not to celebrate the day. Are the people elected capable of governing Iraq at this time? Without 150,000 U.S. soldiers? Or even with them?

Mark Plattner (American Samizdat):

There has got to be some word coined for the Sham that is a Farce wrapped up in and stinking of Bullshit that is this election.

Madeline Albright:

In the democratic symphony, elections are but a single note. An election that produces more of the same, or possibly even worse, will mean neither success nor victory.

John Kerry:

No one in the United States should try to over-hype this election. It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and doesn't vote.

As Alice Miles wrote last week in The Times (London), "There is a shocking tendency … to be more interested in the failure of elections in Iraq than in their success …. People will risk their lives going to the polls in areas of Iraq this weekend, and some parts of the media—in other countries as well as in ours, I assume—have already written off those efforts as worthless, the elections as fatally flawed. What blinkered arrogance."

UPDATE: From the National Lampoon's "Iraq the Vote" website …

Baghdad Dweller comments: "There are people really pissed off because we Iraqis can vote and we voted and we will keep voting. Look at those losers who designed buttons, posters and bumper stickers to discourage the Iraqis … In your faces, you trolls. We did it."

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian, Michelle Malkin, Arthur Chrenkoff, Rand Holman and Hugh Hewitt all remark on the deafening silence coming from the left side of the blogosphere. In general, the MSM seem to have done better than their pajama-wearing counterparts in answering Soxblog's challenge.