Reply #367: Haroon Siddiqui (Toronto Star): A colonial take on Iraq vote

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Toronto Star via CommonDreams
Dated Thursday February 3

A Colonial Take on Iraq Vote
By Haroon Siddiqui

It's gloating time for George W. Bush and those who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Given that nothing else has gone right in the last 22 months, they deserve the moment.

Yes, there would have been no election without the invasion. And the dawn of democracy is indeed glorious. But 100,000 Iraqis are dead, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

Is there anyone, even among the warmongers, who wants to argue in favor of killing that many people in some other nation to make them free?

Iraq was not invaded to give the locals the right to vote. That retroactive rationale, one of many, is so patently false that its logic stacks up thusly: If Iraqi insurgents killed hundreds to stop the vote, Americans killed 20 times that many to get to it.

In fact, the insurgency hasn't so much been about derailing democracy as ending the American occupation. Don't expect it to end overnight.

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