WHY CAN'T WE MOVE AS FAST AS KHATAMI?::

SISTANI'S WAY: Part 2: The marja and the proconsul (Pepe Escobar, 1/29/04, Asia Times)

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami expressed what hundreds of millions of Muslims are feeling all over the world: "The American administration invaded Afghanistan to find [Osama] bin Laden, where is bin Laden? The Americans occupied Iraq under the pretext of installing democracy and finding weapons of mass destruction. Where are these weapons and where is democracy?" Khatami also revealed how Iran is closely monitoring the confrontation between the proconsul and the marja: "Ayatollah Sistani demanded direct democracy, and the Americans refuse it. That's what we have always proposed, one man, one vote." Also in Davos, John Ruggie, professor of international affairs at Harvard and an adviser to Annan, has been far from enthusiastic: "The Bush administration has not changed. The Americans' attitude does not incite anybody to cooperate with them." [...]

Even with all its military might, the US has never looked so fragile and discredited in Iraq. An occupying power which refuses democratic elections using all manners of excuses is being judged by the Islamic world - and the international community - for what it is: a neo-colonial power. It has now been proved there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - much less the means to deliver them. It is now being proved the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with introducing democracy to the Middle East.

The UN mission - "driving under the [Washington] influence" - may estimate that direct elections are impossible before the American-imposed deadline of July 1. US President George W Bush will then be left with two extremely unsavory options. The caucuses will proceed in Iraq's 18 provinces, and 15 million Shi'ites will smash - by any means necessary - the legitimacy of any government that might emerge. Or the Americans may hold direct elections - and in this case Sunnis, not only in the Sunni triangle - will upgrade their already ferocious guerrilla war to code red, because they will never accept losing power to Shi'ites. Jihad or civil war: these are the options ahead.

Mr. Escobar is one of those guys who hates America so much he's started to believe his own rhetoric about us. There are going to be elections and Iraq is going to be a Shi'ite state. The pace at which that happens is the only question here, and the desire of the U.S. and UN to ensure that the process functions as smoothly as possible hardly represents a new colonialism. The difference between an election on July 1st and one on November 1st, or whenever, is not the difference between democracy and dictatorship, and to hold it so is an emotion, not a thought.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2004 9:26 AM