Politics of Shamelessness
Omar at ITM on the embarrassment of the Iraqi parliament’s recess. Tell me about it.
There’s no question that achieving a dramatic military victory in 30 days is very unlikely when we’re fighting terrorists and militias. On the other hand reversing the political damage dealt by the two developments in 30 days seems to need something close to a miracle.
These developments show that a majority in our parliament care only about themselves and their blocs’ interests much more than they do about the country’s in such difficult time and their attitude tells that the blocs don’t want to work together and don’t want to reconcile their differences.
Like we always said, we don’t need reconciliation among the people, we need reconciliation among the components of the political class and if they don’t want to do this then I think the best solution to ensure a fresh political start would be to change the political class through early elections once the security situation allows for. And to do this Iraq will need the “surge” to continue for several months beyond September.
The whole thing here. In our case, it would probably be better if Congress just took the rest of the year off, but there is that cash thing, and after their next round of idle squawking, they’ll still need to vote on appropriations to support American troops in the field, the federal government’s operations for the next year, etc. Early elections only become an option if the Democratic leadership in Congress lives up to its governance-by-poll principles and falls on its political sword.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:13 am on Tuesday, August 7, 2007
7 Responses to “Politics of Shamelessness”
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August 7th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Personally, I’d rather have a high school civics class stand in for Congress. Those adolescents would take the job a lot more seriously.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:01 am
If the war critics have a leg to stand on, it’s their sneering at the Iraqi parliament. After three decades of a bloody dictatorship, you’d think these guys would be eager to find common ground to avoid a repeat. Instead, they all seem to be betting on being the next Head Thug In Charge, feeding their political enemies into the tree chipper.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
This is, unfortunately, how democracies work. Take our pathetic excuse for a congress, for example. It is in the nature of politicians - all other options must be exhausted before reason and common sense rear their noble heads.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Why should the factions in Iraq’s parliament act when they are unsure what our congress is going to do? The various tribes, et al, are either concerned or hoping that we will walk away, leaving them in a position of fighting on sectarian levels. I think that, aside from acting on traditional tribalism, the actions of our own congress leaves them with little incentive to act in the interests of the country as opposed to acting in their own limited tribal/sectarian interests–with Saudi Arabia and Iran doing their bit of proxy politicking, of course.
A part of the problem comes from insisting on Democracy, rather than a Republican form of government, with the social and political value vested in the individual (based on individual rights), the government’s power is limited by a constitution, and majority rule applies only to the election of representatives. We can readily see the dangers involved in unlimited majority rule. It ends up being a legalized gang warfare and rule by the mob. We’ve seen our own Republican government degenerate to the point where we no longer even recognize it in our own country. We now call ourselves a Democracy (and thus our politicians waffle on everything until they’ve seen a poll telling them what the, very fickle, majority thinks), and we base our laws on group rights, forgetting that equality before the law means that every individual is equal before the law. If we don’t understand these things, how do we expect a people coming out of years of tyranny to understand them? And how do we expect it to work?
August 7th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
US Congress took off for August. You don’t hear anyone complaining about that, now, do you?
August 7th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Robert
US Congress took off for August. You don’t hear anyone complaining about that, now, do you?
Nope. For sure our troops didn’t and for damn sure the Iraqi’s didn’t. Our Congress, (Democrats, in particular) set a damn poor example of what our forces are fighting for, around the world.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
“US Congress took off for August. You don’t hear anyone complaining about that, now, do you?”
Hell, no.
If it was up to me, they’d be on vacation from January through Novermber every year.