AP Finds a Cloud Behind Every Silver Lining

An incredibly disingenuous AP article reviews the sentiment in the "Arab street" about the Iraq elections. Oddly, every regular citizen that they quoted believes it is a sham:

"This election is an American movie made to convince Iraqis to go to the polls so that the United States will stay in Iraq and control its oil," said Jordanian Mohammed Fakhri, 28, owner of a mobile phones shop. "There will be ... a government with Iraqi stooges serving U.S. and Israeli interests."

A veiled Egyptian flower vendor who gave her name only as Um Abdel Rahman dismissed the poll as "a sedative for the people. Democracy is just a decoration."

Wouldn't she like to participate in free elections? "Women speak their minds all the time. I don't need to vote," she said.

Even the quotes that seem positive, also warn of American greed and civil war.:

The elections are a "good omen for getting rid of dictatorship," Yemeni political science student Fathi al-Uraiqi said, chewing khat with friends. "But I hope America is not driven by its own interests but by a genuine desire to spread democracy in the rest of the region."

Mohammed al-Omran, a 21-year-old Saudi coffee shop manager, said the Shiites should be fair if they want to prevent the situation in Iraq from dissolving into civil war or partition.

"Saddam Hussein was hated because he persecuted (the Shiites). They should not do the same," he said, as he sipped coffee and smoked cigarettes.

Arab League spokesman Hossam Zaki said the election was a step forward, but added that Iraq, with its unstable security situation, was a "model to be avoided."

According to the AP the only Arabs that approve of democracy are intellectuals. Compare this quote,

Arab governments may not say it, but they don't want Iraq's democratic experiment to succeed," said Turki al-Hamad, a prominent Saudi columnist and former political science professor. "Such a success would embarrass them and present them with the dilemma of either changing or being changed."

With this one,

Writing in Beirut's Al-Anwar newspaper, political analyst Rafik Khoury said Arab governments who have criticized shortcomings of Iraq's elections, demanding that they be "honest and transparent ... themselves ban such elections for their own peoples."

But even the AP gets one right occassionally, the article concludes:

[An] Egyptian student, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, openly spoke about not trusting U.S. intentions in Iraq, saying the new Iraqi ruler "will be a follower of America."

But when asked if democracy can grow in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak is widely expected to seek a fifth term in power, the 20-year-old looked over his shoulder and said: "Let's talk about Iraq. Let's stay away from talking about Egypt."

- posted by Base10 @ 1:09 PM