Sistani is right

Ayatollah Ali Sistani is insisting on full democratic elections, rather than the American plan of carefully managed caucuses, for any new Iraqi government. His seeming obstinacy is generating much gnashing of teeth and dark mutterings about ayatollahs.

But I've said it before and I'll say it again - Sistani is right. Not only that, he is doing more to protect long-term American interests than anyone else right now. Any government that isn't democratically elected will bear the stamp of guilt by association, will be seen as clear evidence of American hypocrisy in its democracy rhetoric, and will saddle the new Iraqi government with a severe birth defect. If Sistani gets his way, the US - and Iraq - will be infinitely better off than if the current plan 'succeeds' in producing a 'pro-American' (read: Chalabi dominated) government which lacks legitimacy, popular support, or real independence.

Sistani is America's ally here, whether the US realizes it or not.

Comments

[Belisarius]

I agree that Sistani is right, and that what he is pushing for is what someone would want if they were interested in a democratic government in Iraq.

But the claim that he's America's ally, I'm not so sure about. To begin with, it's patently obvious that the chickenhawks pushing for the war had no real interest in democracy, either in Iraq or in the US. And the CPA is clearly is clearly not there to establish a democratic government. I would argue that its mandate is, in fact, deterring democracy. So I don't think that Sistani's aims are in any way consistent with those of the CPA, or the Bush administration.

It also seems to me that the population of the US is not in favor of what's really going on in Iraq. If it weren't for people like Cheney (and, according to today's NYT, Wesley Clark in the recent past) continuing to use the mighty Wurlitzer to "get out the message", most citizens would not be in favor of spending lives and money to make the world more dangerous for the US and its citizens. So Sistani is not the ally of this group either, who wouldn't be there if they understood what was going on.

But maybe this is all semantic, and I'm making too much of a turn of phrase. If so, my bad.

[the aardvark]

Aah - but you are assuming that when I say "America's interests" and "America's ally," I mean "Bush's interests/ally." Far from it. I think that achieving real democracy in Iraq is very much in the American national interest, even if I'm agnostic to skeptical about the Bush administration's intentions or preferences.