Vox Day on Iraq

Vox Day is worried about
(a) whether we are going to manipulate the Iraq election and
(b) whether an Iraq ruled by the majority is a good thing.

He makes an interesting point here:

"I was a little surprised when Colin Powell assured the world that the Sunni minority, which may or may not be boycotting the election, would be guaranteed positions of power. If you're not running for office and no one voted for you, then how democratic is a system that grants you electoral office anyhow?"

On the other hand, in a district-based system (like in the US), it doesn't necessarily matter which party gets the most votes overall, or what percentage of people in a district vote; for that matter, our Senate guarantees that 500,000 Wyomingians have the same representation as 30,000,000 Californians.
So guaranteeing represnetation isn't necessarily anathema to representative government; particularly when it may be necessary to soothe ethnic tensions.

On the other hand, he is very right that there is something wrong if we are trying to game the system in order to put our man (according to Day, Allawi, although Chalabi might be in the running as well, heck, with separate Prime Minister, Premier, and Presidential positions, we could have both as well as a third guy - Pachahi? Talabani?) in power. If we are gaming the system to make certain that one Iraqi group doesn't become the lepers of Iraq, that's one thing, if we're just exercising control in order to fill the government with our puppets, that's quite another.

In any case, if the Sunni Arabs boycott the election, one has to wonder about the wisdom of saying "tough beans." After all, maybe they don't want to be in the same country as the Shiite Arabs and the (mostly Sunni) Kurds. Rather than punish them for non-participation, maybe they need to be partitioned. Of course, if their goal is not just not to be dominated by Shia, but to dominate the Shia; that is, if they want rule over the entirety of Iraq rather than just self-rule, that is a problem.

And, of course, there is the problem of what happens if the Shia, encouraged by Sistani, decide to make the government semi-theocratic. Vox Day has a big concern that there will be a trade-off between allowing the Iraqis to have true self-rule and keeping them a relatively liberal society; perhaps even between allowing self-rule and keeping them a society that doesn't threaten us.

I concur with him.

That is all.