Pajamas Media has in-depth coverage of the Iraqi elections featuring Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar of Iraq the Model. It looks like turnout is gong to be very high for this one, so keep checking back for all the latest information.
Austin Bay also has a great article on the significance of these elections and why they represent the real revolutionary politics in the Middle East:
For decades, the Arab street (a violent drag controlled by tyrants, their power enforced by terror) kept Arab reformers in the Arab alley or the Arab jail. The Arab street also has served as a theater for choreographed displays of anger. Addressing the real sources of Arab deprivation and degradation — autocratic oppression and systemic corruption — was forbidden. Arab reformers either shut up, went into exile or were assassinated
That’s no longer the case. The successful, history-shaping, liberating war in Iraq has begun to “free the street.” It isn’t free yet. Theo-fascist and Saddamite bombs strike Baghdad every day. Syrian assassins, trying to stop Lebanon’s democratic movements, are murdering Lebanese democrats. Reformers know these acts of terror are attempts to “turn back the clock” and return control of “the street” to the dictators.
Despite the violence, Iraqis and Palestinians are creating democratic alternatives. The world’s free people need to encourage the Iraqis and Palestinians, not disparage them with defeatist rhetoric and myopic pessimism.
Indeed. Suicide bombers and truck bombs can level buildings and kill innocents, but they are nothing compared to the unstoppable power of the human aspiration for freedom. The Middle East is on the cusp of a democratic revolution, and the people of Iraq are leading the way – and the forces of democracy not only can win, but they will win.
