[Media-watch] Sorry George, but Iraq has given you the purple finger - Guardian/Klein - 12/02/2005

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411350,00.html

 I don't recall seeing this here but apologies if it has already been 
posted.
JA


Sorry George, but Iraq has given you the purple finger

The party likely to win the election opposes the US presence and policies

Naomi Klein
Saturday February 12, 2005
The Guardian

'The Iraqi people gave America the biggest thank you in the best way we 
could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a 
columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about 
my late grandmother.
Half blind and a menace behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly 
refused to surrender her car keys. She was convinced that everywhere she 
drove (flattening the house pets of Philadelphia along the way), people were 
waving and smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad 
news. "They aren't waving with their whole hand, grandma - just with their 
middle finger."

So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election observers. They 
think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers 
and sweets, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger. Judging 
by the millions of votes already counted, Iraqis have voted overwhelmingly 
to throw out the US-installed Ayad Allawi, who refused to ask the United 
States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance 
(UIA); the second plank in the UIA platform called for "a timetable for the 
withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq".

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's 
platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which 
the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to 
citizens to build homes"; the alliance also pledges "to write off Iraq's 
debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development 
projects". In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market 
policies imposed by the former chief American envoy Paul Bremer and locked 
in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls 
support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set 
timetables," George Bush said four days after the Iraqis voted for exactly 
that. Likewise, Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed 
a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, 
keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if 
Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way - he's Iraq's finance minister and the man 
suddenly being touted as the leader of Iraq's next government.

Al-Mahdi is the Bush administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't 
think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In 
October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he 
planned to "restructure and privatise [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises", and 
in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil 
law, "very promising to the American investors". It was al-Mahdi himself who 
oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in 
the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent 
austerity deal with the IMF.

On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform, and 
instead appears to be echoing Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans 
go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance 
responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very 
close to the clerics.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again while the occupation and 
resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two years of bloodshed, 
bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up to this: a deal in which 
the ayatollahs get control over the family, Texaco gets the oil, and 
Washington gets its enduring military bases (call it the "oil-for-women 
programme"). Everyone wins except the voters, who risked their lives to cast 
their ballots for very different policies.

But never mind that. January 30, we are told, was not about what Iraqis were 
voting for; it was about the fact of their voting and, more important, how 
their plucky courage made Americans feel about their war. Apparently, the 
election's true purpose was to prove to Americans that, as George Bush put 
it, "the Iraqi people value their own liberty". Stunningly, this appears to 
come as news. The Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said the vote was 
"the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi 
people". On The Daily Show, CNN's Anderson Cooper described it as "the first 
time we've sort of had a gauge of whether or not they're willing to sort of 
step forward and do stuff".

This is some tough crowd. The Shia uprising against Saddam in 1991 was 
clearly not enough to convince them that Iraqis were willing to "do stuff" 
to be free. Neither was the demonstration of 100,000 people held one year 
ago demanding immediate elections, nor the spontaneous local elections 
organised by Iraqis in the early months of the occupation - both summarily 
shot down by Bremer. It turns out that on American television, the entire 
occupation has been one long episode of the reality TV show Fear Factor, in 
which Iraqis overcome ever more challenging obstacles to demonstrate the 
depths of their desire to win their country back. Having their cities 
levelled, being tortured in Abu Ghraib, getting shot at checkpoints, having 
their journalists censored and their water and electricity cut off - all of 
it was just a prelude to the ultimate endurance test: dodging bombs and 
bullets to get to the polling station. At last, Americans were persuaded 
that Iraqis really, really wanted to be free.

So what's the prize? An end to occupation, as the voters demanded? Don't be 
silly, the US government won't submit to any "artificial timetable". Jobs 
for everyone, as the UIA promised? You can't vote for socialist nonsense 
like that. No, they get Geraldo Rivera's tears ("I felt like such a sap"); 
Laura Bush's motherly pride ("It was so moving for the president and me to 
watch people come out with purple fingers"); and Betsy Hart's sincere 
apology for ever doubting them ("Wow - do I stand corrected").

And that should be enough. Because if it weren't for the invasion, Iraqis 
would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation, and then to 
have that vote completely ignored. And that's the real prize: the freedom to 
be occupied. Wow - do I stand corrected.