January 13, 2005
It's the process, not the results
At right is an image the Washington Post used to highlight this story on how the Bushviks want to lower the bar of expectations for the upcoming elections in Iraq. I think the picture itself is worth a thousand -- no, ten thousand -- words, what with the helicopter ominously overshadowing a poster with what appear to be repeated images of a single candidate.
But the article quotes a senior administration official -- anonymous, naturally -- who perfectly maps the American model of electoral legitimacy onto the Iraqi situation:
"I would ... really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don't have any meaning, but to look on the outcome and to look at the government that will be the product of these elections," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a White House briefing yesterday. The official highlighted the low voter turnout in U.S. elections as evidence that polling numbers are not essential to legitimacy.
No, for these guys, victory is essential to legitimacy. And the victory doesn't have to correspond to anything so crude as numerical measurements. Hey, if you can get the press to call it legitimate, who cares how many people vote for whom?
That looks to me like a poster encouraging people to vote, not a poster for a specific candidate. But then, I don't read Arabic so it's hard to know for sure!
Posted by: dylan at January 14, 2005 01:27 PMYes. The caption explained it's a general "get-out-the-vote" type of poster. But I think someone has added stickers of Ayatollah Sistani at the bottom. Not sure what the political meaning of that would be - perhaps Juan Cole could parse it for us.
Posted by: Chris at January 14, 2005 01:32 PM