This post is in response to the toon below (click to enlarge)
Cartoon on the Iraq election (April 8, 2005 9:20 AM) Posted by:jw jw
How can we spend 300 BILLION dollars in a country, and have the Iranians win the election.
Yeah - that's an improvement.
Re: Cartoon on the Iraq election (April 23, 2005 9:59 PM) Posted by:Cylar Z
>How can we spend 300 BILLION dollars in a
>country, and have the Iranians win the election.
>
>Yeah - that's an improvement.
Actually, it is.
You must be referring to the fact that the Shiites carried the day in Iraq's recent election, and that that somehow ties in with neighboring Iran being run by a Shiite theocracy. The election results in Iraq have a lot do with the Sunnis boycotting the polls, as the Shiites account for only about 60% of Iraq's general population.
The key difference, however, is that Iran is a repressive regime run by a handful of Islamist mullahs answerable to no one. Iran has a miserable human rights record, no free press, no independent judiciary, is on the US State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, and is feverishly working to develop nuclear weapons. It has less to do with Iran being Shiite and more to do with it having an authoritarian government. Did you notice how similiar its regime is, in practice, with that of secular Saddam's Iraq or communist North Korea? It's about politics, not religion.
Meanwhile, none of these things are true of a free Iraq - whether it be dominated by Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, or anything else. Democratic nations do not sponsor terrorism, invade their neighbors, or crack down on dissident expression within their borders. It's hard to imagine the US and its allies planting a representative, democratic government in Free Iraq which would turn around and behave as Iran does.
