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Drooling on the Pillow

Monday, January 31, 2005

The Vote 

Yesterday I posted a picture of one of those ubiquitous purple fingers with the title 'It's The New Orange." I was referring, of course, to the recent democratization of the Ukraine, in solidarity with which blog heads were changed to orange, orange ties were worn, a whole theme-meme sprung up.

The very last thing I want to do on this earth is to denigrate the courage and accomplishment of the Ukrainians, but I do want to draw this distinction. In the Ukraine there was risk to what the democrats did. It took courage and nerve to stand up against the thugs in power and their success is a great story.

In Iraq yesterday everyone knew, every single adult knew with absolute certainty, that people would die for voting. The conventional wisdom was that many people would die. You saw the pictures. Not only did they come out, they brought their children and their grandparents, they stood for hours in lines, they smiled for the cameras and they held up their purple fingers.

It's a long way from voting to a functioning democracy. They are far from out of the woods. But yesterday should have answered a lot of questions for everybody.

It's just my opinion, but if anyone would like to now assert that democratic institutions are inimical to Arab or Muslim societies, I think they are declaring themselves against those institutions and people should understand them as such.
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:09 AM
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