Elect Iraq

Details of the Iraqi political process are remarkably absent from the reports of our MSM — and that’s a real shame, because watching the Iraqi experiment in democracy is going to be interesting, no matter what the outcome. Fortunately a number of blogs are filling in for the failures of the MSM.

Publius Pundit reports that the party structures in Iraq are evolving in interesting and complex ways, reflecting the integration of the Sunni Arab politicians into the overall political process (now that the Constitution has been approved, this is really a necessity from their perspective) and the dis-integration of the radical Shiite Arab politicians. Both of these developments are very encouraging for the eventual success of democracy in Iraq. And both of these developments put the lie to those who proclaimed (before the Iraq war) that “Arabs aren’t ready for democracy.” The Iraqis don’t seem to be having a lot of trouble understand the subtleties of their flavor of democracy…

From Publius Pundit:

...it is worth emphasizing that the Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the other grand ayatollahs are not endorsing a political party or coalition this time. I’ve long held a positive view of Sistani’s role in this process, going back to shortly after the fall of Saddam, but this is a good thing. It was good that Sistani endorsed the United Iraqi Alliance list back in January to get the process rolling, but the Shia don’t need guidance on this now.

BTW, the girl in the photo above right is holding a card that says “Elect Iraq.” Elect Iraq, not some particular person or party. Someone over there understands the real power of democracy, and has found powerful way to express it in just two words…

Meanwhile, over at Iraq the Model, Omar reports on a citizen’s committee formed to influence the political process to press for civil rights and what I’ll call “quality in government” (now that almost sounds silly as I write that <smile>). Or, as Omar puts it himself (I’m assuming that by “community” he means “committee":

The basic theme of the community is to take a promise from politicians, civil society activists and MPs (current or running for office) to preserve and protect the rights and freedoms every Iraqi citizen is supposed to enjoy under the new constitution and under the internationally recognized conventions and laws and to work to introduce amendments in the constitution whenever believed necessary for the protection of these rights and freedoms.

The founders of the community named five main points in the constitution that require urgent reconsideration…

Consider how much has to be working for such a thing to take place — it’s a very encouraging train of thought. It indicates to me a rather deep understanding of the democratic political process. It also represents a most refreshing departure from politics-by-explosives…

Take a moment to read these two blogger’s posts: you’ll find them much more observant and useful than the blather the MSM is pouring into America’s ears and brains! As usual, click on either photo for a larger view…

Alito

Alito is exactly the kind of judge that conservatives wanted Bush to nominate in the first place — and he’s exactly the kind of judge that liberals didn’t want him to nominate.

Based on what I’ve read over the past few days, Judge Alito looks good to me, but then, I’m no expert on such matters. However, from a purely political perspective this nominee looks like a winner from every direction. The liberals will have to make up their mind whether they’re going to take their opposition all the way to a filibuster. If they do not, Alito will be easily confirmed — a good political outcome from my perspective. If they do take it to filibuster, then we’re going to have a rousing political battle which I think is almost certainly going to end up with the liberals backing down (a good outcome) or the “nuclear option” being taken, taking away the privilege of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (also a good outcome). The only bad outcome, politically, would be if the liberals managed to filibuster successfully, without the nuclear option being taken — and it’s hard for me to imagine a way for them to pull that off.

So I’m quite happy with this nomination; count me as a firm supporter on this one, as opposed to being neutral on Harriet Miers. Again, this is from purely a political perspective, as I don’t know enough about Judge Alito to have an independent opinon of his qualifications for the job.