The Vietnam Turnout Was Good as Well

The Vietnam Turnout Was Good as Well has an interesting take on Sunday's success. While I encourage and welcome voting, our prostrating ourselves in front of W is a little too much. An election where Sunnis may have stayed away is not an election that will generate peace. And too, the violence and bloodshed was there, though conveniently left out of our news reports.

The opening paragraph of this article is very interesting. If only we all would learn from history:

On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.