Hehehe… I picked the term up from reading Arab blogs and articles. It seems to be one they like to use to describe the Al Quida types.

It has occured to me that some people of the region might want to show the world that not all Arabs or Muslims are like the folks we see on Al-Jazeera.

Maybe they want to prove something to the world.

Only time will tell.

Thank you for clarifying. Salafic theocracy should be reserved for the Saudis and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Qom school is responsible for the mullahcracy in Iran and Sistani is the head of the Najaf school which actually (as far as I can tell) disavows actual religious participation in politics – although he seems to have endorsed the winners in the current election prior to it occuring.

The Iranian mullahs present a factual counterpoint to your assertion that the Qom school does not embrace theocracy but I imagine that they are quite clever in explaining that what they are doing make look, taste, feel and smell like a theocracy but is actually something quite different.

As time passes we may well find that all the religious brouhaha means far less than imagined.

It’s the extremists in either case that color the reporting, not the silent majority of Iraqi’s who voted last Sunday. In fact the Iraqi’s laugh at us for our emphasis on religious divisions in the country. I think it was Zeyad over a year ago who wondered why Americans were so obsessed over it.

And what, pray tell, will the Democrats’ reaction be when they discover that Sistani himself could not vote because he is in actuality Iranian? Now that should be a show-stopper! LOL Mullahcracy in Iraq for sure now! LOL

I can hear them now. My God! What has Bush just accomplished! Disaster!

But dig a little deeper and you find that Sistani has eyes and ears and knows damned well what a mullahcracy means. What happened in Iran he does not want for Iraq.

I think what we do have to watch carefully, and the Iraqi people must too, is any erosion of an independent judiciary as time goes by. That’s a democratic institution that must be preserved.

But for now and the immediate future, and probably well beyond, I am very optimistic about Iraq.

Aren’t we repeating the mistake that the Iraqis admonished Burns about, talking as if religious affiliation was the most important thing to an Iraqi?

Nor are the Iranian shia Salafist. Nor is theocracy part of the traditional practice of Shiism. Nor are the Shia a single unified block, there are at least three theological centers: Lebanon (Hizbollah), Iran (Qom), and Iraq (Najaf). Iran tried to make Qom the final authority, but the power is moving back to Najaf where Sistani heads up a more conservative branch, i.e., not revolutionary.

I don’t know how things will go, who does, but the whole position of the Democrats is based on the most egregious ignorance and is purely motivated by politics.

I have also heard Iraqis say this in interviews.

This is PRECISELY the point that the war-hating Left refuses to understand. “All is relative, you see. Who are we to judge another society?”

Such arguments are nonsense when you’re talking about core human nature, which the Left claims is a blank slate without instinct.

Nope. Watch for talk to start about next years elections. Those are the ones that will really count the most. Essentially, the Iraqis have voted for delegates to a constitutional convention. I expect the new constitution to offer protections for basic human rights and to provide checks and balances – not in the same sense that our constitution does but in a sense that reflects current reality in the ME.

As that constitution emerges and minority groups are assured of their rights and a degree of autonomy for their regions I anticipate a great increase in a desire to participate in the next election. The greater the degree of autonomy granted to each governate the higher I would expect participation to be.

Additionally, although it is overshadowed at the moment by all the talk of religion, Iraq does have a national identity and a propensity toward secular rule (whether monarchical or representative) that is lacking in other of its neighbors. Combine that with at least a modest amount of intermarriage between Shia, Sunni and Kurd and I would say that Iraq has a very good chance of becoming the “Model” that the Fardhil brothers hope for.

I sincerely doubt that, with a truly secret ballot, theocracy as practiced in Iran or Saudi Arabia could currently garner a majority anywhere. Salafic theocracy can be imposed and maintained only through terror – it is unnatural and as much a tool for oppression and suppression as Marxism ever desired to be. A mode of governance for tyrants and bandits but never one that will be selected by vote – not with the examples of Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the KSA before the worlds eyes.

I have great hopes for Iraq and I believe that the Irai people will fulfill and perhaps exceed them. To the great dismay of their neighbors and to Kennedy, Kerry, Beckel & Cie.

So now we not only have to have elections, we have to have elections in

which the right people win.

Well of course that is the Dem response – haven’t they been saying this since

2000?

You know in a few years I can see the Dems having self-marginalized themselves

as much as some of the Sunnis in Iraq that they will be demanding an affirmative

action program for Dem voters.