Of Elections and Insurgencies

Chris Dierkes

Chris Dierkes (aka CJ Smith). 29 years old, happily married, adroit purveyor and voracious student of all kinds of information, theories, methods of inquiry, and forms of practice. Studying to be a priest in the Anglican Church in Canada. Main interests: military theory, diplomacy, foreign affairs, medieval history, religion & politics (esp. Islam and Christianity), and political grand bargains of all shapes and sizes.

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11 Responses

  1. North says:

    Yeah horray, Iraq is having some elections. It wasn’t worth it.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Art Deco says:

        This is one of the argument forms that irritates me.

        “Statement that contains truth (or a blunt assessment of situation based on more than merely partisan inclination).”
        “Response criticizing manners.”

        Once upon a time, Republicans/The Right was good at saying “look, I appreciate that you have feelings but we’re talking about political realities.”

        What’s next, Deco?

        Will you start keening and asking us why we don’t care about The Children in Iraq? FOR GOD’S SAKE WHY WON’T ANYONE THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN???Report

    • North in reply to North says:

      I’ll cop a guilty plea to that charge Art.
      I’m guessing you feel that thousands of American service members lives and a trillion dollars was worth it so that Iraq could have a democratic government? If so we have a lot more countries to go. I’m sure we could throw together a list. Wait weren’t we supposed to get a side of Weapons of Mass Destruction with our Kill Saddam/Democratize Iraq happy meal?
      That said I’m glad the Iraqi’s are pulling it off. Good for them, power to em and all that. My indictments would be against certain former administrations in this country, not against the courageous peeps of Iraq.Report

      • Art Deco in reply to North says:

        I have no strong opinion on what would be ‘worth it’ or not in the abstract. I am not an adept of philosophy. I do think decisions are made prospectively and that assessing the future course of the political life of any given society is likely to be an error laden process (something the opinionated Mr. Dierkes might consider).Report

  2. I’d feel a lot better about it if there was the prospect of a truly majority government which could make some claims to being representative of the majority of the people, and which truly recognized minority rights, if but tacitly. I have never had much faith-actually I’ve never had any faith-in cobbled together governments made up of disparate entities with conflicting general aims. It’s a recipe for even greater corruption and in all too many cases, eventual coming apart at the seams. It would be good to see some kind of run-off system between the two major parties, but on the other hand that might just make matters worse.

    People criticize the US two-party system not without some merit, as well as the electoral college process, for in my opinion nowhere near as valid reasoning, but by and large, its the major reason we’ve only had one civil war, in my opinion.Report

    • Art Deco in reply to PatrickKelley says:

      Donald Horowitz has written on the alternate vote (ordinal balloting in single-member constituencies) as an optimal system for divided societies; others have criticized his thesis, maintaining that the dispositions of electorates can frustrate the salutary features of ‘vote pooling’. IIRC, the use of proportional representation with national lists for Iraq was favored for logistical reasons.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    We didn’t invade so that Iraq could have elections until we left at which point they’d finally have that civil war that Saddam was keeping a lid on.

    We still hold a wolf by the ears.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

      I’m glad things are going reasonably well in Iraq (as I would be about any other place in the world), but I’m not getting excited until the conclusion is “So we can go home now.”Report

  4. Barry says:

    “2. The Sunnis (predominantly) reject the outcome of this election, feel cheated, betrayed, etc and give up on the parliamentary political process.”

    I couldn’t find the link in a limited amount of time, but there was a newspaper article (NYT?) very recently which mentioned government arrests of many Sunnis involved in the Awakening. I’d place your #2 as a dead certainty, with the only unknowns being the actual body count and effects.Report