It's Messy or Here We Stay

Remember Iraq?  We helped the Iraqis install an election-based government a few years ago.  Famously, the Iraqis voted with their fingers, turning Na'vi-blue in full 3D for their first sojourn to the polls, sidestepping IED and Ba'athist homeless.  Democracy was in Iraq to stay.

Until now.

Perhaps that is unduly harsh.  Iraq has elections coming up again and you'd think everyone would be celebrating their freedom and slandering their candidates.  Well, not quite.  The Shi'ite Elections Overlordship has found that a whole slew of candidates won't even get to the slandering stage; they just banned the candidates as not up to snuff.  Coincidentally, most of the banned were labeled Bat'thists and no further explanation seemed necessary.

So, now the Sunnis are upset.  Seems every Bat'thist is a Sunni and most are ex-Ba'athists anyway.  There is no Ba'ath party and hasn't since Saddam came out of  his spider hole back in 2003 as an early Christmas present for George III. Most outrageous, Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party known as the National Some Dialog Front, has been banned as a candidate by the Shi'ites.  Apparently, Saleh was a Ba'athist when Chevy Chase was playing Jerry Ford.  But he was such a lousy Ba'athist, that hateful party actually kicked him out in 1977, when an expulsion really meant something.

Often that something was a bullet to the temple.

Saleh may not have merited a bullet in 1977, but he is getting the shaft now, according to some ticked off Sunnis.  They want to boycott this election just as they did back in 2005.  That boycott worked out so well, the Sunnis kept themselves pretty much out of parliament; hence, not every Sunni is going all out for the boycott. 

Naturally, the US is staying above the fray.  Our Gen. Ray Odierno, and our ambassador, Chris Hill have kind of said that the top Shi'ite Election Overlords are buddies of Iran's President Ejad.  As if that were a bad thing.

As you regular readers will, no doubt, not recall, I favored the democratization of Iraq because I was assured it would result in lower gas prices for my '99 Lexus, which I could drive at a steady 15 mph in a school zone with or without floor mats.  We were assured by no less than George III that democracy, however hard and  messy, would be good for Iraq and even better for America.

Maybe the sub-dollar gasoline hasn't materialized yet, but that hard-won democracy, in all its messiness, is in full bloom in Iraq and the Iranians find they love the mess in Iraq a lot.