I read (via Instapundit) my friend David Adesnik’s naturally confused/bemused reaction to the coverage of Saturday’s election in Iraq in the New York Times and the Washington Post. David is correct. It would indeed take an advanced Talmudist to parse the strange locutions and seemingly conflicting verbiage of these reports and arrive at some conclusion about the truth of what occurred.
Besides being another example of the risibility of the pretense that such publications are unbiased - you can almost see the jockeying between editors, reporters and headline writers, rising like a holograph of ambivalence from the printed page - it is also another reminder of the value of blogs. The Times and the Post have many fine writers (Burns and Filkins deserve their kudos), but it is not just that they are not - to my knowledge - fluent in Arabic that they are less interesting to read during events like Saturday’s election than Iraq the Model or Sooni. It is that these Iraqi bloggers frankly express their biases in virtually every post. There is no pose of objectivity which, in human endeavors, has yet to be achieved. For that reason sometimes I even trust their facts more. I can analyze those details directly based on where the bloggers are “coming from” and adjust accordingly. I don’t have to filter their reports through myriad staff meetings and the requirements of supposedly hands-off publishers. Of course it’s useful to have both (blogs and MSM) to compare.
Meanwhile, here’s Sooni today:
I think you all were surprised how peaceful the Vote was (in comparison with the last election the Zarqawi attacks were over 300 but in this Vote they were only 13), it wasn’t the security measures for sure nor the lack of suicide bombers but I think it’s the new situation that most of the Sunni Arabs voted like all other Iraqi sects and groups.
One may ask: what’s that got to do with stopping the attacks?
Firstly: for Zarqawi Sunni Arabs are like the backbone of his operations in Iraq because almost all his followers are from them and also they provide the logistic support for him and his fighters (most of the west side of Iraq is a Sunni Arabs provinces and it’s the major route for the Arab fighters that come from Syria), so starting to kill them without plan (B) will be a big mistake.
Secondly: I guess Zarqawi is also eager to know what the real situation in Iraq is, surely he knows about the Kurds and the Shia’s but he really need to know about the Sunni and who’s with him (people who said NO) and who’s against him, and this Vote is like a free survey that will help him to set his future plans.
So there’s good news and bad news.
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8 Comments
1. Terrye:Zarqawi also knows that even the people who voted no…. voted.
That means they are part of the process whether they like it or not.
I do think the last minute compromise helped make up the minds of some Sunni to vote yes. We will see.
Now there is the next step, the vote in December for parliament.
Oct 16, 2005 - 8:46 am 2. Jamie Irons:Roger,
Sooni not only provides an account of events in Iraq I feel I can trust, but also a level of analysis that is surprisingly (or perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at all) sophisticated:
It is truly stunning that the New York Times and The Washington Post seem unable to read the significance of yesterday’s electoral turnout in Iraq. By the way, Roger, I would not call their reaction “ambivalence,” because that would imply that, at some level, they wished Bush’s efforts to succeed.
Jamie Irons
Oct 16, 2005 - 8:58 am 3. David Thomson:What is difficult to understand? The elections in Iraq are a feather in the cap for President Bush. The New York Times and The Washington Post are Republican hating media outlets. They feel obligated to filth on the White House and therefore refuse to give the president credit. In back of their minds, they are asking themselves
Oct 16, 2005 - 9:23 am 4. Rick Ballard:The analysis in the NYT and WaPo was as shallow as their second rate status as objectively pro-Islamofascist press organs would dictate. Hardly surprising.
I’m curious as to why none of the Iraqi bloggers have discussed (as far as I’ve seen) the effective status of the al-Anbar governate if it returns a two-thirds vote contra the constitution. It would seem to me that such a vote would constitute a de facto state of rebellion and allow the Iraqi government to procede with retaliatory reprisals as soon as the Sunni once again start voting with bullets rather than ballots. It seems a reasonable speculation that Saddam and the henchmen on trial with him will be hanged (finally) prior to the elections in December and his execution will likely spark an outburst by the Sunni.
Passage of the consitutional referendum is a great achievement for Iraq but it is not the end for Zarqawi and the Baathist deadenders. The new Iraqi government is going to be charged with ridding Iraq of the terrorists and the US is going to have to stand aside as they employ measures with which we may disagree.
Oct 16, 2005 - 10:30 am 5. Mister Ghost:Roger,
According to Iraqi Blogger Ladybird — not always the best source, as her beliefs make members of the DU seem Ultra Conservative by Comparison - okay, she’s a Communist — four provinces have voted No on the Constitution. In my survey of
Iraqi Blogs for Iraqi
Bloggers Central about the Constitution,
the Bloggers seems to be split evenly.
Oct 16, 2005 - 1:54 pm 6. richard mcenroe:So how advanced a Talumdist do you have to be to spell Talmudist correctly?
Oct 16, 2005 - 2:34 pm 7. triticale:A true Talmudist would read it backwards and in Hebrew (kinda like Ginger Rogers) and the meaning would be contained primarily by the consonants. Therefore the transposition error richard is snarking about is trivial.
Oct 18, 2005 - 9:17 am 8. bardseyeview:I’d love to see a garland of indictments unfurled, all relating to CIA agents who have been leaking routinely, indeed probably conspiratorially.
Not likely. That would be the act of an adult prosecutor.
Oct 22, 2005 - 10:05 am