The Left and Fallujah
It is difficult to exaggerate the lengths to which the antiwar Left went to undermine the November liberation of Fallujah. “The war in Fallujah cannot be won,” thundered Howard Zinn; “No Victory in Fallujah” howled a Nation editorial; Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin even called for an activist offensive to safeguard the terrorist-infested city against “Bush’s thuggery.”
Well, four months after that much-maligned offensive, comes word from London’s Telegraph that Fallujah is one the safest places in Iraq. Attacks have been drastically cut down; the evacuated population is returning; life is coming back to normal. Difficulties remain, to be sure, but the collaboration of our indefatigable troops and eager Iraqis augurs well for Fallujah’s future.
Not that the Left saw this coming. Recall the black predictions issued by leftist doomsayers like Phyllis Bennis, a researcher the Institute for Policy Studies. Just weeks prior to the siege of Fallujah, Bennis prophesied that the military invasion of the city would kill any prospect of democratic participation. According to Bennis, “Iraqi elections held under the boot of U.S. military occupation will not be legitimate, whoever is in control of Fallujah.” Bennis could not have gotten it more wrong. The Telegraph reports that:
Last month's elections gave a taste of what a Sunni city freed of insurgent threats might be like, when a third of registered voters in Fallujah cast their ballot, representing just less than half the eligible voters in the entire al-Anbar province.Clearly, the Left’s loss is Fallujah’s gain.
2 Comments:
If the registered voters of Falluja are a subset of the eligible voters of Al Anbar province, how can a turnout of one third of the Falluja voters be almost half of the Al Anbar voters?
OK, I'm in Baghdad right now and I can explain this one.
You see, in Al Anbar rural voters were counted differently than urban voters. Where urban voters were counted one-for-one, rural voters were weighted as to whether or not the voter was literate or illiterate; male or female; Sunni or Shia; Arab or Kurdish; Jewish or Palestinian; Christian or Canadian; a goat owner or a herder of someone else's goats; armed or unarmed; masked or unmasked; left handed or right handed, etc.
The rural votes were then tabulated through a supercomputer using a complex algorithm (I'll spare the details) that spat out the total vote.
Due to the heartfelt and genuine concerns of the Left about the validity of the votes from Al Anbar and Falluja, the Powers That Be decided to seek help from the world's only legitimate authority on democracy, the United Nations.
Thus, the above-mentioned system was implemented by the Blue Beanie Brigade, resulting in less than zero votes being cast by rural voters in Al Anbar. Personally, I think the UN did great because they really cared, which is undeniable because they took into consideration the socio-economic plight of these poor people (remember the goat thing?).
Plus, they took some of their very, very valuable time while in the field to do some free exploratory drilling for oil. You know, so the Iraqis would know where it was in case they needed to sell it someday for food and medicine.
What?
Or, maybe Mr. Laksin inadvertently mistyped. As long as his heart was in the right place, it's OK.
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