Exactly. The gangsters who used to run the place won't be happy about any kind of election, so we musr regard them as just one set of people who can't take a joke.

I really isn't our place to solve this one for the Iraqis. The government which comes out of the elections will have to take the fresponsibility for doing what is necessary. The danger we face is the same one we failed to meet 30 some years ago: to avoid making a decision we squandered the country's patience and the military's morale.

We are doing very well, thus far, but we'd better have a good plan for the end game. The new Shiite-Kurdish Iraqi government is going to have to put down remnants of the old regime like Crassus putting down the Spartacist revolt, and we're going to have to back them up, or it was all for nothing.

I don't get why we should be upset that a bunch of Sunnis won't vote. Seems to me like a feature, not a bug.

Except that plenty of these Sunnis carry weapons and some will use them.

The Democrats don't. Yet.

If the Blue State Democrats took up weapons, they'd have to arrest themselves for violation of their states' gun control laws. It might lead to more prison food riots over demands to make every vote count, but that's about it.

I'm haunted?

Call and exorcist.

Ehhh, anyone read this on Iraq the Model? Or is this old news, it was posted on 1/8:

A translated report about an election poll from Al-sabah.

Thanks to Ladybird for the translation.
Actually I've heard about this poll few days ago but couldn't have the time to translate it.
The headlines of this poll were:

1-The poll was of 4974 Iraqis living in and around Baghdad.

2-Will the security problems cause you to?
Not come out and vote the day of elections = 18.3%
Come out and vote the day of elections = 78.3%
No opinion = 3.4%

3-Do you support military action against the terrorists?Yes = 87.7 %No = 11.1%
Don’t Know = 1.2%

If these were the results that appeared after taking samples from in and around Baghdad which is considered to be the most dangerous area in the country (and inhabited by lots of Sunni Iraqis by the way!), then what would the results look like if the samples were taken from Basra or Erbil??

Matt: True, which is why we shouldn't be bothered if fewer of their representatives are in the government. It's not like four or five more members of parliment are going to convince them to put the guns down.

This to me sounds like a variation of what the NY Times had to say about the Afghani election. They will say and do anything that will cramp the Bush election attempt. I think the Iraqis should just go ahead and vote with what they have and it will be up to the Sunnis to either vote or not. In any case the majority of the Iraqis will vote. The country should not be held hostage to 20% of the population. If the Sunnis lose the election, they would be causing problems anyway. How is this any different. At least the majority will have had a chance to make their desires known and the country will have taken a giant step forward toward an elected democracy and a chance to be free. If they stop the elections at this point in time, they will always find a reason to stop the elections and the Sunnis will realize that all they have to do is threaten to do something and they will get their way. It is like in this country where the demmies will run to their pet judges every time the populace votes against their wishes.

Mr. Cohen:

True, but my point was that their lunatic fringe is considerably more dangerous than our lunatic fringe, Parliament seats aside. If I'm reading OJ correctly, he thinks they are roughly equivalent.

Incidentally, I first saw this profoundly negative story in my local paper yesterday morning, with the New York Times listed as the source. I had to laugh when I saw that idiot Howard Friel on C-Span later today defending his book (cowritten with the equally horrible Richard Falk, a one-time admirer of the ayatollah) criticizing the New York Times for being too supportive of U.S. military ventures. Where do these people come from?

Falk comes from Princeton which says it all.

Mr. Murphy: I saw parts of that interview. I couldn't watch much of it at one time. I finally turned it off for good when he argued that, as 9/11 wasn't an "armed attack" as that term is defined in the various applicable treaties, we had no right to attack Afghanistan without Security Council approval. This is nice ammunition for my argument that President Gore would have done nothing more than send in some cruise missiles to blow up some tents; but it would have been nice if Adelman had pointed out that, if that's what international law says, than international law is an ass.

Matt:

Our lunatic fringe plunged us into a far bloodier Civil War so they could maintain slavery.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the proportion of the American Electorate who chooses not to vote bigger than 20%?

OJ:

Right -- but that was, ahem, a little while ago. Modern-day Democrats aren't yet that dangerous.

Bart:

Falk also signed a 1977 statement that was printed in the New York Times and defended the Vietnamese Communist government. The statement said that the new Vietnamese regime was making admirable progress in human rights areas, etc.

Falk, as noted, was also recorded as saying that the religious nature of the Ayatollah's regime was overblown and that his government represented a real hope for democracy in the region.

Considering that the president of Princeton, who was also once the head of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, practically got on his knees and begged Peter Singer to come teach at his university, I figure Princeton can keep Falk.

Mr. Cohen:

I pretty much tuned out when he repeated the "100,000 dead" nonsense.

Matt:

Neither will their extremes be after two hundred years of democracy

OJ:

Of course not, but right now they're a problem.

Yes, a temporary and easily solved one.

OJ:

Assuming they eventually settle down and face facts. Some of the Islamists seem congenitally incapable of doing that. And if, say, half or one-quarter of the recalcitrant Sunnis commit violence, the Iraqis will have to pacify anywhere from 3-10 percent of their countrymen. An America where 3-10 percent of the population was willing to personally murder civilians or support such acts would certainly have problems.

Like you, I'm optimistic, but I think the Sunnis are a major problem at least in the short run. And if we define the long run in the Keynesian formulation as being the moment when one meets the angels and the saints, then I'm afraid a number of innocent Iraqis may be facing the long run sooner than they anticipated.

Far higher percentages were perfectly happy to enslave and then Jim Crow their fellow Americans and about half are okay with murdering them now and two million people are in prison. We still consider ourselves an enlightened democracy.

We had a war over the first issue. The second issue is a moral cancer on our civilization, but abortion doesn't cause social upheavel the way terrorism does, precisely because it exterminates our society's most helpless and disregarded (and out-of-sight) members. Those two million in prison may be mostly composed of nasty people, but only a small percentage would probably consider wantonly murdering innocent people. I don't see the parallel.

I reiterate that I don't think the Sunnis will stop the long-term march towards an Iraqi republic; I've really been encouraged by the eagerness of long-repressed Muslims to vote and participate in elections. I take a rosy view, just maybe not as rosy. The Sunnis will adapt or be crushed. But some percentage of them are, at least right now, a problem.