Iraq’s al-Maliki demands recount

Spending trillions of dollars and killing hundreds of thousands of people was ostensibly supposed to bring “freedom” to Iraq, so they could have fair elections. But wait a minute? Didn’t killing all of those people and imposing all of that military force alter the paradigm just a tad? If you don’t go with the program over there, you are killed, which is the same way that it was when Saddam was in charge (or at least that’s what we’re told).

Anyway, the main reason why George Herbert Walker Bush and Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf didn’t attempt to colonize Iraq during the first Gulf war is because they knew that the sectarian makeup of the population is very difficult to appease. They didn’t want to spend ten years and trillions of dollars only to leave the country in more disarray that it was in under Hussein. But under Bush Jr., the neocons got their war.

Now we are seeing that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki is looking like a loser in the election over there. Iyad Allawi, a Shi’ite whose coalition includes many Sunnis, is leading in the balloting and al-Maliki can’t cope. He is calling for recount and predicting (calling for?) violence if he doesn’t get his way.

“I call on the High Electoral Commission to respond immediately to the demands of those blocs to preserve the political stability and prevent the security situation from deteriorating and avoid the return of violence,” said al-Maliki.

The Iraq electoral commission see no need for a recount. Faraj al-Haidari, who heads up the commission, remarked: “If there is a glitch, they can file a complaint and say there was a glitch in that station. They say they want a manual count, but this is up to the commissioners’ board to decide. We do an accurate electronic count.”

Mr. al-Maliki appears to be all for democracy, unless people decide not to vote for him. Clearly, the Iraqi people are interested in going in another direction, and that says something about the U.S. invasion and occupation.