Article: Election under foreign occupation is illegal

[theresistance]

Article by Eric Margolis: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/01/30/914831.html

(snip)

Real freedom still far off

First, no election held under a foreign military occupation resulting from an unjustified war is legal under international law. During the Cold War, elections staged by the Soviets after invading Afghanistan, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were rightly denounced by the U.S. as "frauds" and the leaders elected as "stooges.

(snip)

Some perspective to counter the media deception...

[Betsy Ross]

1. No, no. Elections under occupation by the USSR are illegal.

[sw04ca]

2. I don't buy it...

After all, there was Japan.

[theresistance]

3. Huh? What don't you buy?

So you thinks its all okay in Iraq, elections and all?

[sw04ca]

5. I don't challenge the legitimacy of the elections based on their...

...occupied status. Really, I haven't heard anything yet to discredit the elections there, apart from nonsense from armchair revolutionaries. On the other hand, I haven't really investigated it yet either.

[K-W]

6. The elections never had any credibility in the first place.

So it doesnt matter if you havent heard anything yet to discredit them. And those armchair revolutionaries clearly know alot more about Iraq and the elections than you do, because they are illigitimate for a myriad of reasons.

[sw04ca]

8. Those armchair revolutionaries...

...also tend to make a lot of crap up, so I generally ignore them. In my past experience, their sources tend to be shady or fraternal in nature, and their objections based more upon political dogmatism than anything else.

[jdj]

10. so you're making a statement about something you haven't

investigated or educated yourself about?

[K-W]

4. Luckily for the world it isnt your decision. EOM

[gnofg]

7. hey don't insult

Moe, Larry and Curly

[Spazito]

9. Margolis is right, as usual

He rightly points out the breathtaking hypocrisy inherent in the bush regime. Elecions in countries occupied by the former USSR were illegal but election in countries occupied by the illegal actions of the US are A-okay.

I like how he points out that the UN charter, which the US has signed, enshrines the right to resist foreign occupation:

"Many Iraqis will vote for anyone promising to end violence and social misery. But just as many nationalists and Islamists, excluded from the election process, are voting their own way -- with bullets and bombs. Washington calls them "terrorists," but the UN Charter enshrines people's right to resist foreign occupation."

[jdj]

11. I think the Iraq election was no less legitimate than ours in Nov.

sob.

[WillowTree]

12. But we made a big deal...

....out of turning Iraq's sovereignty back over to the Iraqis last summer when Allawi became the interim PM and we keep saying that we're only there as peacekeepers and at the will of the interim Iraqi government. We can debate the legitimacy of that turnover, of course, but that's the argument that our government and theirs (as it now exists) will make in answer to such a challenge. "We're not occupiers, we're peacekeepers, staying at the behest of the Iraqi government."

And if those two are in agreement on that point, it will be awfully difficult to prove otherwise. I mean, if we say we're only there at their forbearance and that we'll leave whenever they tell us to and they say that they want our troops to stay there to try to hold things together until they can do it themselves, how would one go about proving that it's not so? Even if it's not so?

[theresistance]

13. That's the idea of creating a puppet regime

Up until now its all been puppets saying that US forces should stay. A new government won't be elected until December, so thats another year of occupation and resistance. Who knows how this government will say or do. If a new Shiite govt says foreign troops can stay, then that could lead to more resistance. The elections were a sham as the Soviets organised elections in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but the world wasn't celebrating those elections at the time...