Distilled goodness from Juan Cole: Maliki calls for Recount, warns of renewed bloodshed
Is Iraq slipping into Semi-Authoritarianism? (March 22, 2010)

The holding of elections in Iraq gave rise to a spate of articles on how may George W. Bush really did change the Middle East and maybe Iraq is turning out all right after all. These arguments derive not from analysis but from a desire to bolster the Republican Party and its ideology (which combines militarism abroad with Marie Antoinette-style lack of empathy with the woes of the common person domestically.)

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So some authoritarian regimes are moving to put up democratic facades and so becoming semi-authoritarian. And the few regimes that seemed earlier to make a place for more democratic governance--Israel, post-2001 Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, post-2003 Iraq-- seem to be moving toward semi-authoritarianism and slipping back from democracy.

Ironically, the most genuine steps toward democratization have taken place in Turkey and in Pakistan. But Bush and the neoconservatives had backed the Turkish and Pakistani militaries, so this heroic story of the little people attaining their rights was never celebrated by the US mass media. Democracies are unpredictable and hard to control (as Bush found out when US allies like France and Turkey declined to line up behind the invasion of Iraq), and so Turkey and Pakistan are disturbing the world status quo. That is the real reason for which some Obama administration officials have talked about Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world. They did not speak that way when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was in control of the country. You have to wonder how committed most Washington elites really are to democratization, and have to wonder whether semi-authoritarianism in Middle Eastern allies might not be perceived as holding benefits for the US.

Personally I tend not to take seriously claims of electoral fraud by the incumbents (in this case both Iraq's PM Maliki and President Talabani), but we shall see...

The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter