Iraq Pundit: On Iraqis' purple fingers
| 10:35 UK time, Monday, 8 March 2010
The media is over exaggerating the blasts in Ur and generally have an air of pessimism towards the Iraqi elections. This is according to Iraq Pundit's post .
Iraq Pundit is a blogger in Baghdad who wishes to remain anonymous. We contacted him/her a week or so ago and asked for a guest post on Blogworld about the Iraqi elections so here it is:
Everyone has had something to say about these Iraqi elections. Indeed, they've been referred to as a key test of Iraq 's nascent democracy - another in an ongoing series of such tests, it seems. There are those who see the process as good, such as in the Wall Street Journal " Iraq 's newborn democracy is a juggernaut that will not be stopped."
Some see it as bad, such as NBC's Tamer El Ghobashy who says a truly inclusive democratic process has yet to emerge. And there are those who see the process as ugly, such as of the Phil Inquirer, who says that Iraq is just not a democracy.
Now at last the Iraqi people have had a chance to have their say, too. At least, Iraqis have their say where it most matters, at the country's ballot boxes. It's easy enough for media visitors to Iraq , like the New York Times' , to pass judgment. He writes, "To call Iraq a failed state is an exaggeration, though not unthinkable."
Such so-called experts exasperate many Iraqis because they pronounce as if they know the future of this land. Yet they have no idea what will happen here, as so many of them have demonstrated in recent years. Many observers have based their vehement arguments on an assumption that Iraqis are an exceptionally violent people determined to kill each other over sect and ethnicity as well as politics.
You'd think that by now these pessimists would have learned a lesson about caution. Those who had argued so vociferously that Iraq was doomed all along have had to hedge their darker prophecies.Those who said Iraq was no good are now saying that, well, it's not altogether horrible, or even that it's a little bit good. Even those who insisted that the surge would fail now admit that it worked.
Had the experts not looked down upon the Iraqi people, they might even agree with who wrote in the WSJ that Yes, Iraq is a democracy. To Iraq 's critics he says "Leave it to the Egyptians and the Arabs of the Peninsula and the Persian Gulf to belittle the new order in Iraq .
They threw everything at it but it managed to survive. Peace has not settled upon Baghdad , but this Iraq , even in its current condition, is a rebuke to the dynasties and the dictatorships of the Arab world." And I would add, to the cynical pessimists of the Western press.Iraq has some tough days ahead. Nobody is saying its ideal here. But give the Iraqi people a chance. Get over it, guys. Iraq 's a democracy.
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