HERE’S A REPORT from a counterterror protest in Los Angeles.

WE’RE WATCHING THE ARNOLD BIOPIC that’s advertised to the right (hey, they bought an ad, I can at least give ’em a couple of viewers). It’s not bad. The guy who plays the young Arnold is excellent. The guy who plays the current Arnold is only so-so. Arianna Huffington is the heavy, and is, er, played to perfection. The L.A. Times is repeatedly hammered as dishonest and biased.

UPDATE: Not bad. The Insta-Wife — a huge Arnold fan — liked it a lot. It ended with not one, but two, references to amending the Constitution so that Arnold could run for President. They’re getting that meme out early . . . . (And, yes, I know it was already floated in Demolition Man back in 1993, but that wasn’t serious. Or was it . . . .? ).

AXIS OF EVIL UPDATE: “In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.”

But this is the best part: “According to exiles, North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash — an important sign, says one activist, because ‘the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else’.”

I MENTIONED IT EARLIER, but Steve Stirling’s comment-Fiskings over at Democratic Underground deserve their own post:

“All the media keeps talking about is how happy the Iraqis are, how high turnout was, and how “freedom” has spread to Iraq.”

— that’s because Iraqis, like other people, want a democracy.

You know, like the Germans and Japanese, countries that are also democratic thanks to American military occupation.

In those cases, conquest and occupation were undertaken during the great Democratic administration of FDR, who understood that American power was the world’s main force for good.

My father-in-law, a working stiff, lifelong Democrat, and BAR gunner in the 2nd Infantry who fought all the way from Normandy to Bohemia in WWII, also understood this.

Plenty of Democrats do — Joe Liebermann, for example.

A little examination of history would show you that occupation by the US is the best thing that can happen to a badly governed country; contrast and compare North (mass famine with 2,000,000 dead) Korea and South (obeisity problem) Korea, if you want an example.

al-Zawqari, leader of the Iraqi “resistance” (he’s a Jordanian, btw.) has made plain that he doesn’t like democracy.

Quote “We have declared fierce war on this evil concept of democracy”, unquote. He’s also declared that the Shia majority of Iraq are “idolators and apostates” who deserve to die.

Nice guy.

Now, here’s a question: are you for the people who want votes and democracy, or for the fascists?

“I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called “voters” and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all.”

— the one trying to kill the people who want to vote and chose their own government? The one that’s declared “fierce war” on democracy, and said they want to kill anyone who votes?

Fortunately, their threats turned out to be mostly empty.

“Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots?”

— 8,000,000 ballots. Turns out most Iraqis are… “American puppets?”

“I can’t believe the Iraqis are buying into this “democracy” bullshit.”

— sorry, fellah, down here on Planet Reality, most people want democracy. Including Arabs.

“Maybe they’re afraid and felt they had to vote. That’s the only way I can explain it to myself.”

— since they were threatened with death if they _did_ vote, there’s a bit of a contradiction there.

In fact, they put on their festive clothes and in many cases danced to the polls, elevating their fingers to defy the “insurgents” who’d threatened to kill anyone whose finger was marked with the ink showing they’d voted.

“Becuase if it’s not–and if the Iraq vote is seen as a success that spread “freedom”–the world is screwed.”

— let’s see… the world is screwed if democracy spreads among the theocrats, kleptocrats, and general tyrants characteristic of the Middle East.

Run that one by me again?

Now let’s sponsor elections in Saudi Arabia. I would just love to see the Saudi princelings in exile, clipping their coupons and complaining about how the Americans betrayed them.

“they only increase the fight and take down those who betrayed their country today by voting in this fraud election.”

— you want to kill off 8,000,000 Iraqis? Awesome, dude.

We Democrats obviously have some work to do before we can expect to win any national elections. I think I’ll toodle on over to “The New Republic” and see what the sensible people are saying.

Nice to know that somebody’s making good points over there. He has a bunch of posts (start at the top and search “joatsimeon” on the page to read them all — better hurry before the moderators take them down!) Maybe there’s hope for the Democrats yet, if Steve’s still in there swinging.

I would buy one of his books in gratitude, but I already own ’em all!

DEMOCRATIZATION IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT, of course — though it’s mostly the predictable carpers who are making that point. But here are some useful comments from some non-carpers. Here’s one:

The process by which we succeed in Iraq (if we do) can be thought of as a series of events by which one party keeps faith with the others. First, we kept faith with the people of Iraq by remaining in force to rebuild the country after we toppled Saddam and carried out our search for WMD. Then, the Shiite majority kept faith by rejecting the radical elements when they rose up against the occupation. We then kept faith with the Shiites by scheduling elections and seeing them through as scheduled. And today, the Iraqi people kept faith by turning out and voting.

Further acts of faith will be required. The Shiites must now keep faith with the U.S. and the Sunnis by developing a consititutional system that respects (both on paper and in practice) Sunni interests. The Sunnis must keep faith by participating in that system. The U.S. must keep faith by continuing to provide security, train Iraqi forces, and assist with the reconstruction. Even if these things happen, the insurgency probably will not end. But Iraq will develop the institutions and the forces that should enable it to deal with the insurgency with far less help from us.

Will the parties continue to keep the faith? I don’t know. But so far, every time a party has needed to rise to occasion, it has. And never more spectacularly than today.

And then there’s this:

Viewed as an end in itself, establishing democratic forms of government in Afghanistan (you remember the vast quagmire of Afghanistan, right? The one that swallowed the Soviet Union and was going to swallow us, according to the America-hating lefties?) and Iraq is not the ultimate solution to the problem of Islamofascist terrorism, but as part of an overall strategy that includes the destruction of those regimes actively supporting, financing, and using Islamofascist terrorists, then the establishment of workable democracies in that region becomes a superb weapon aimed at the heart of our enemies.

Look. It’s simple. Freedom works.

Indeed. Or in these words: “To borrow from Churchill, the capture of Baghdad was the end of the beginning. The national vote was the beginning of the end.”

JOHN COLE emails with this request: “Could you please explain to readers that John Cole and Juan Cole are not the same person?” I think if they read the blog, they’ll know.

GREG DJEREJIAN WONDERS why there’s not more support for the Iraqi elections on the Left.

UPDATE: It was my understanding that there would be no math.

MORE: The Arab press seems to think the Iraqi elections are important.

STILL MORE: Here’s a comparison of Iraqi voter turnout with that of other countries where no one was threatening to behead the voters.

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER AND I are watching the Simpsons Fifth Season DVD. There was just a very amusing Garrison Keillor parody.

UPDATE: Actually, the Simpsons parody was meaner than this one.

QUICK — CHANGE THAT HEADLINE! “Really, that is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen the New York Times do.”

A BLOG OF ONE’S OWN: For famed blog-commenter Dennis the Peasant.

BOB BECKEL ON KERRY’S WET-BLANKET STATEMENTS on the Iraqi elections:

Yeah, this is no time for “buts”. I mean, whoever is advising him politically made a terrible mistake.

“Whoever is advising him?” Blame the staff!

GREG DJEREJIAN: “Professor Cole, alas, can’t quite bring himself to come out and state the obvious. Which is that the insurgents suffered a major blow today–because Iraqis courageously came out in droves to vote and because there were far fewer insurgent attacks than anyone dared hope.”

Or as a commenter to this post observed: “The vaunted Arab Street finally speaks.”

UPDATE: Reader James V. Somers emails:

Glenn: For most of the past two years, the debate on how well Iraq is going seems to boil down to this: one group says that it’s a complete disaster, the only successes are tactical, not strategic, and the insurgency is gaining strength. The other group says that it’s going quite well, thank you, and the insurgency’s successes are only tactical, not strategic. In short, you either believe that Iraq is mostly a success, or you believe it’s mostly a failure. (Andrew Sullivan appears to be in both groups.) In any case, weren’t today’s elections the biggest test yet of whether the glass is mostly full or mostly empty over there? Yeah, there were some attacks by the insurgents that met with some tactical success, but a whole lot of people showed up all over the country and voted. It seems to me that after today, there can no longer be much debate about who’s in control of most of Iraq, or as to whether most people there want to participate in a democratic process that moves the country forward from where it’s been.

Indeed.

MARK STEYN:

The Afghan election worked so well that, there being insufficient bad news out of it, the doom-mongers in the Western media pretended it never happened. They’ll have a harder job doing that with Iraq, so instead they’ll have to play up every roadside bomb and every dead poll worker. But it won’t alter the basic reality: that today’s election will be imperfect but more than good enough. OK, that’s a bit vague by the standards of my usual psephological predictions, so how about this? Turnout in the Kurdish north and Shia south will be higher than in the last American, British or Canadian elections. Legitimate enough for ya?

But look beyond the numbers. When you consider the behavior of the Shia and Kurdish parties, they’ve been remarkably shrewd, restrained and responsible. They don’t want to blow their big rendezvous with history and rejoin the rest of the Middle East in the fetid swamp of stable despotism. The naysayers in the Democratic Party and the U.S. media are so obsessed with Rumsfeld getting this wrong and Condi getting that wrong and Bush getting everything wrong that they’ve failed to notice just how surefooted both the Kurds and Shiites have been — which in the end is far more important. The latter, for example, have adopted a moderate secular pitch entirely different from their co-religionist mullahs over the border. In fact, as partisan pols go, they sound a lot less loopy than, say, Barbara Boxer. Even on the Sunni side of the street, there are signs the smarter fellows understand their plans to destroy the election have flopped and it’s time to cut themselves into the picture.

Read the whole thing. Though actually, as noted below, the coverage has been better than most of us expected.

SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE found at the Democratic Underground!

UPDATE: Intelligent, but short-lived — an update says the posts have been erased. Down the memory hole!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Stirling is administering comment-Fiskings (he’s JoatSimeon). In response to the claim that Saddam was our creature, he observes: “Incidentally, Saddam was consistently aligned with the USSR during the Cold War. Did you wonder where all those T-72 tanks came from? This is the sort of nonsense that gives Democrats a bad name.”

ZEYAD REPORTS FROM AMMAN:

The turnout in Iraq was really like nothing that I had expected. I was glued in front of tv for most of the day. My mother was in tears watching the scenes from all over the country. Iraqis had voted for peace and for a better future, despite the surrounding madness. I sincerely hope this small step would be the start of much bolder ones, and that the minority which insists on enslaving the majority of Iraqis would soon realise that all that they have accomplished till now is in vain.

Another surprise was to see some Iraqis who had fled the country in fear of reprisals, such as the families of ex-regime figures and ex-Ba’athists, actually voting and encouraging others to vote! I know some of those from school and college and I imagined they would be bitter about the whole process, but many were not.

Jordanians were wishing Iraqis luck these few days everywhere on the streets. One young man at a mall, on recognising my Iraqi accent, asked me who I would be voting for. I politely told him that I would vote for who I believe is sincere. Strangely, he said that he personally preferred Allawi and hoped most Iraqis would be voting for him. I wished his country luck as well since the King had promised direct elections for municipal councils as a first step. He dismissed that as nothing much and said that “One should start from the ‘Head’ down, not the other way around”.

Heh. No wonder Abdullah was down on the elections. Kings usually are.

NORM GERAS reports from Manchester:

Here’s a story for our time and it’s from my neck of the woods. Demonstrators against the Iraqi election were chased off by people who weren’t too impressed with their demonstration. The demonstrators were from an Islamic group; the ones who got upset with them were… Iraqis.

Heh.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (free link) is rounding up election-blogging from Iraq.

UPDATE: Adam Keiper has put together a slideshow of photos from the elections. And Scott Koenig offers some historical perspective.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: “Arabs Mesmerized by Iraqi Elections.”

GOALPOST-MOVING EFFORTS spotted.

LOTS MORE ELECTION-BLOGGING FROM IRAQ, HERE, with photos. Just keep scrolling.

UPDATE: More photos here. And Jeff Jarvis is all over the story — just keep scrolling.

FROM IRAQ:

I’ve been reading the coverage, and watching the pundits. This appears to be the new line of dissent:

“Yes, Iraqis voted today in massive numbers. But voting isn’t democracy.”

I agree. But that’s also like saying that the best college basketball team didn’t win the NCAA championship. It may be true, but they ARE wearing the rings. Wanna see my purple finger?

Meanwhile, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers suggests: “Why not ask people to wear blue marker on their index fingers this week, as a sign of solidarity and a tip of the hat to the courage of the Iraqis today?”

Good suggestion. I hope that the meme spreads. And read this post on turnout by Roger Simon: “Before the spin doctors get a hold of the ‘how big was the turnout’ question in Iraq (60%? 70%?) and use that to denigrate this great step forward that has just taken place, let’s remind ourselves that turnout in recent US Presidential elections is barely over 50% of eligible voters and that in the nascent days of our democracy, 1824, it was 26.9%.”

UNSCAM UPDATE:

THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein.

Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme.

The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing calls for his resignation over the management of the humanitarian programme.

I suspect that the new Iraqi government will not be amused.

FRIENDS OF DEMOCRACY will be on C-SPAN at 2:00 Eastern and invites questions. And be sure to check out their whole site, which offers lots of on-the-scene reports from around Iraq.

HEH.

AUSTIN BAY notes that the profusion of Iraqis with inked fingers represents a major blow to the terrorists:

That’s an identifying mark – one that almost literally shoves a finger in the eye of terror.

Yep. The terrorists have been revealed, not as “minutemen” but as, well, terrorists.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the people who are trying to throw a wet blanket on this accomplishment.

Brian Dunn offers a prediction of what the next round of negative talk will be.

UPDATE: And more wet-blanketry — actually, it’s a lot worse than that — over at the ironically named Democratic Underground:

All the media keeps talking about is how happy the Iraqis are, how high turnout was, and how “freedom” has spread to Iraq. I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called “voters” and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all. Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots?

I can’t believe the Iraqis are buying into this “democracy” bullshit.

Sigh. More along those lines here. Jeff Goldstein is deeply disappointed in some of the critics.

MORE: “Those who churlishly denigrate today’s vote really do identify themselves as blind ideologues of the worst sort.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on churlish denigration here.

And here’s a roundup of Democratic Underground comments. Sigh.