The Idol of Jan. 30

December 02, 2004

There’s no question that the United States, occupying Iraq and now strengthening the size of its occupying force, can successfully insist on elections there Jan. 30. In recent days, given the opportunity to hedge its bet, the Bush administration has staked all of its chips, and all its prestige, on that date. It’s foolishness of the worst sort, equal to the errors they’ve made in the past, from trying to impose Ahmed Chalabi on Iraq to believing that Iraqis would greet U.S. forces as “liberators.”

As usual, leading the foolishness are the neocons and their chief mouthpiece, the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, who insists in today’s column that the elections be held come what may, and that country be turned over to Shiite-Kurdish militias:

As the results of U.S. training of Iraqi police and soldiers remain uneven, it becomes more and more likely that the Shiite and Kurdish militias that U.S. officials have fought to keep out of any significant role in maintaining national order will be called on by the next government to do just that. The new order will be run on Iraqi rules, however uncertain, messy or even tumultuous they may seem at this point.

Hoagland, like most neocons, strongly endorses the “unified list of candidates” being dictated by Ayatollah Sistani, a list that includes fundamentalist Shiite parties like Al Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, along with Chalabi (yes, he’s back). The “militias” that Hoagland praises would be SCIRI’s scary Badr Brigades, the militant army armed and trained by Iran, reportedly with 10,000 fighters. Sure, Mr. Hoagland, let’s let them loose in Fallujah!

The fact is, a Jan. 30 election held under the guns of 150,000 U.S. troops, with Iraqi police nowhere to be seen, will be a U.S.-imposed one, and the government that it creates will have no more legitimacy than Prime Minister Allawi’s puppet one today.