El Salvador and Iraq

Another idiotic editorial today in the NYTimes by David Brooks. Brooks' model for the new Iraq--El Salvador in the 1980s. Brooks argues that despite the leftist revolutionaries (terrorists of course) best attempts, Salvadorans came out in droves for the 1984 election that elected Jose Napoleon Duarte, clearly a fine example for the kind of leader we can only hope for in Iraq. Brooks exhorts us that since El Salvador is such a success story (after all they are home to many maquiladoras today) we should continue our support for democracy in Iraq.

Mind you that Duarte was an ineffective leader unable or unwilling to do anything to help the common people in his country. He did continue the long tradition of El Salvador as a US client state that was more than happy to be used as part of the US war against the Sandinistas. He also failed to rein in the country's right-wing death squads, who among many thousands of other offenses, raped and killed several US nuns.

See the fiction of Manlio Argueta, particularly One Day Of Life, for a little more on the kind of government Brooks seems to want in Iraq.

It's nice to see that the New York Times employs such intelligent commentators to enlighten us. Because all Iraq needs is voting and everything will start getting better. Especially if that vote is rigged for pro-US candidates and elects a US supporter that will turn Iraq into a client state with American access to oil.