In an effort to justify his insistence that supporting US foreign policy is morally equivalent to supporting ISIS, Gandalf has taken to claiming that rather than establishing democracy in Iraq, the US actually "fought tooth and nail" against the establishment of democracy, and that the Shites somehow managed to impose it on them against their will. Over about ten pages I have managed to extract some sketchy details from Gandalf, amongst extensive rants, on how they pulled this off.
polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 26
th, 2016 at 7:27pm:
Oh FD, I'm not afraid to own it - the US is an imperialist that systematically tramps around the third world destroying democracy wherever they feel it hinders their economic interests. Of course this includes Iraq, where the US fought tooth and nail against the whole setting up of democracy thing. It was only because of a mass grassroots shiite movement that saw something resembling a democracy - but certainly no thanks to the US efforts. And it makes sense - Iraqi democracy can really only mean one thing - the majority shiite population voting to align themselves closely with shiite Iran, who is considered a direct threat to the US's Gulf buddies.
polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 30
th, 2016 at 3:38am:
Pretty much as soon as Saddam was toppled, local provinces started organising to elect local councils as a first step to (democratically) selecting candidates for the much anticipated general election. Not surprisingly, the Bremer regime moved swiftly to ban any such meetings and elections, and laid down laws that the provincial councils must instead be handpicked by the US occupiers. Interestingly this clampdown was widely reported at the time, but not many people seemed to appreciate the significance of it - probably because it was the same time as the sunni insurgency was just starting to fire up.
What was widely reported was that the US itself set up one local election, then changed it's mind.
polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 1
st, 2016 at 11:27am:
But you need only to apply the same argument that the Nazis "created" Germany's prosperity today to see how silly it is: for without them the allies wouldn't have declared war on Germany, wouldn't have invaded and reduced the country to rubble, and wouldn't have rebuilt the country virtually from scratch, along with billions and billions in aid.
Gandalf are you suggesting that the US role in Iraq was more similar to that of the Nazis in Germany rather than the allied forces that liberated west Germany and re-established constitutional democracy?
polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 3
rd, 2016 at 11:27am:
freediver wrote on Feb 2
nd, 2016 at 6:58pm:
Are you suggesting they should have had elections to see who could be candidates for the election?
Of course. All genuine democracies have some democratic preselection process - you might have heard about the US process currently underway to select candidates for the presidential election later this year.
This is simply not true Gandalf. You propose an absurdly redundant democratic mechanism and reveal an infantile understanding of the functioning of democracy.
Quote:Also the local councils that the Bremer regime objected to and banned were intended to manage local administration - as any local government does, in addition to providing the process of preselecting national candidates for an eventual national election.
Why would the US encourage the development of a hodge-podge of local-based candidate selection processes in parallel to a federal constitution? That does not make sense. It would only undermine the federal constitution, which was established by a democratic process.
polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 4
th, 2016 at 12:30pm:
Excellent point FD - as your own wiki article said, council elections were established in 2013 - a full two years after the US left.
This was not because the US was getting in the way. The US opposed council elections prior to (ie outside of) the establishment of a federal constitution. They facilitated local elections within the framework of a federal constitution. Elections for the establishment of the federal constitution were held less than two years after the invasion, and the first federal elections were held that same year. That's pretty good progress if you ask me. You will have trouble pinning the delay from then until 2013 on the US.
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