Hail to the Chief

[Mycroft]

Kurd Picked As Iraq Interim President

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi parliament picked Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new interim president Wednesday, reaching out to the nation's long-repressed Kurdish minority and bringing the country closer to its first democratically elected government in 50 years.

Ousted members of the country's former regime — including toppled leader Saddam Hussein — watched the event on television in their prison cells, Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin told Al-Arabiya television.

The announcement that Talabani won drew applause in the National Assembly. In the north, Kurds danced in the streets upon hearing the news.

"Today Jalal Talabani made it to the seat of power, while Saddam Hussein is sitting in jail," said Mohammed Saleh, a 42-year-old Kurd in Kirkuk. "Who would have thought."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050406/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_2

John Sterward of the Daily Show joked about the Iraqis electing a President with the word "Taliban" in his name, but in truth he doesn't seem to be any sort of religious fanatic.

John also pointed out he looks like an Iraqi Wilford Brimley.

"Democracy. It's the right thing to do."

 

[Skeptic]

Two VPs were elected as well: one Sunni, one Shi'a.

Again, this is (as Churchill said) "not the end, not the beginning of the end" of trouble in Iraq, but like the elections, it sends a very strong messege that the Iraqis are doing their best to make democracy work.

Honestly, I am amazed at both the courage and the reasonbleness of the Iraqis in voting and then creating a government. It alsmost seems to me as if they should teach the Americans about it, instead of the other way around.

P.S.

To those who say it is just a "symbolic gesture" to have a Kurd/Sunni/Shi'a triad:

First, yes, OF COURSE it is--but it's a symbol that means something.

Second, if the President and both his VPs were all Shi'a, would you say that that, too, is insignificant and symbolic, or would we hear unending diatribes on how this "proves" Iraq is becoming an "Iran-like Shi'a theocracy"?

...thought so.

 

[Garrette]

Originally posted by Mycroft:

John Sterward of the Daily Show joked about the Iraqis electing a President with the word "Taliban" in his name, but in truth he doesn't seem to be any sort of religious fanatic.

He's not, as most of the Kurds are not. Taliban is a tribal name, not a religious affiliation in Kurdistan.

Fanatacism, however, can show up quickly in relation to tribal loyalty.

The Talibani comprise one of the two major Kurdish tribes remaining (the other is the Barzani, the deceased patriarch of whom is a national hero revered almost to the extent of sacredness).

The Kurds have a fascinating and heartening recent history.

Despite their own, very violent, internecine strife and despite the brutality suffered under Hussein, they siezed the opportunity presented by the no-fly zones to create what was in effect a separate and functioning country.

Remarkably, this almost-country is very tolerant. It created, on its own, the first Iraqi (and possibly Middle Eastern, but I'm not sure) religiously and ethnically tolerant educational system.

Children are allowed and encouraged to learn in their native languages and to study all religions with an emphasis on their own.

This is no small thing. In Kurdistan their are Sunnis, Shiias, Yazidis, Turkomen, Christians, and Jews, to name the major ones.

As an aside, the name "Hussein" is also fairly prominent in Kurdistan.