Bush intensifies America's marionette of brutal tyrants
By: Robert Zaller
Issue date: 2/11/05 Section: Ed-Op
Originally published: 2/10/05 at 9:40 PM EST
Last update: 2/10/05 at 9:43 PM EST
Originally published: 2/10/05 at 9:40 PM EST
Last update: 2/10/05 at 9:43 PM EST
THE IRAQI ELECTIONS on January 31 were a great victory--for a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran. As expected, the clear winner will be the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition hand-picked by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. Sistani, the real ruler of Iraq, has been calling the shots for the American occupation ever since the fall of Baghdad.
It was he (not the Bush administration) who insisted that a constituent assembly for the new Iraq could be chosen only by popular election, rather than by the American-instituted Coalitional Provisional Authority. Likewise, it was Sistani who vetoed the American scheme to conduct regional caucuses amenable to American influence, and who insisted on a single, nation-wide election under U.N. auspices.
What American officials wanted was a chance to rectify their horrendous initial error in discarding the Sunni counterweight to the dominance of Iraq's Shiite majority by dismantling Saddam's chief institutional structures, the army and the Baath Party. By insisting that the minority Sunnis should no longer be able to impose themselves on the Shiites (a mistake the British never made in setting up modern Iraq back in the 1920s), they promoted the reclusive but much-revered Sistani to the status of kingmaker.
Refusing to meet with the American occupiers, he has dictated his terms to them through a series of fatwas or decrees, and America has danced to his tune. In return, Sistani has kept his Shiite constituency from joining the Sunni insurrection against the occupation, the tactic apparently favored by the hotheaded cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The fact of the matter is that, without Sistani's forbearance, the American occupation would become untenable in a week.
The election itself was a personal triumph for Sistani. In the absence of anything like a campaign--Iraqis voted for party slates, not individual candidates, most of whom did not even publicly reveal their identities for fear of assassination--Sistani's image, emblazoned throughout the country, alone legitimated the whole farcical proceeding and made clear who was really being 'elected.' Polls showed that a majority of Iraqis knew neither whom nor what they were voting for, but believed they were choosing a president rather than an assembly. In a sense, they were right. What they affirmed was their faith in Sistani as their leader.
It was he (not the Bush administration) who insisted that a constituent assembly for the new Iraq could be chosen only by popular election, rather than by the American-instituted Coalitional Provisional Authority. Likewise, it was Sistani who vetoed the American scheme to conduct regional caucuses amenable to American influence, and who insisted on a single, nation-wide election under U.N. auspices.
What American officials wanted was a chance to rectify their horrendous initial error in discarding the Sunni counterweight to the dominance of Iraq's Shiite majority by dismantling Saddam's chief institutional structures, the army and the Baath Party. By insisting that the minority Sunnis should no longer be able to impose themselves on the Shiites (a mistake the British never made in setting up modern Iraq back in the 1920s), they promoted the reclusive but much-revered Sistani to the status of kingmaker.
Refusing to meet with the American occupiers, he has dictated his terms to them through a series of fatwas or decrees, and America has danced to his tune. In return, Sistani has kept his Shiite constituency from joining the Sunni insurrection against the occupation, the tactic apparently favored by the hotheaded cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The fact of the matter is that, without Sistani's forbearance, the American occupation would become untenable in a week.
The election itself was a personal triumph for Sistani. In the absence of anything like a campaign--Iraqis voted for party slates, not individual candidates, most of whom did not even publicly reveal their identities for fear of assassination--Sistani's image, emblazoned throughout the country, alone legitimated the whole farcical proceeding and made clear who was really being 'elected.' Polls showed that a majority of Iraqis knew neither whom nor what they were voting for, but believed they were choosing a president rather than an assembly. In a sense, they were right. What they affirmed was their faith in Sistani as their leader.
