Unlike our useless national press,
Patachon offers us some helpful historical context into the past experiences of the United States and the elections it has sponsored in it's Neo-colonial outposts.
However, should we fine tune our historical antennae just a wee bit, we see that the pattern begins a bit further back. See below, as the New York Times old timey archive once again offers some pearls to ponder. . .
Befitting its oft-recited appelation as "the Forgotten War," the Korean War and its run-up sadly evades the historical purview of most Americans. Granted, most Kossacks are too young to remember, personally or through siblings, this event of 50 odd years past. This blind spot is unfortunate, because in terms of warfare, politics, journalistic lapses, and political silencing - the patterns we see in the American Wars in Vietnam and now Iraq we indeed set down in the first of the hot Cold War conflagrations.
Note the eerily uncanny similarity in this headline from May 11, 1948, when South Korea partook in the first post-World War II election.
South Korea Turns Out 85% Vote Despite Terrorism That Kills 38
The optimistic percentage, the language of terror, the death count - all critical elements of the headlines we see in the Vietnam example ("Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror") and again today, verbatim.
The article continues to praise security efforts, "[p]olice precautions were credited with having kept the death toll to the twenty-five for the day." We also have the "beyond expectations" crowd, as one Taiwanese UN lackey Y.W. Liu beams, "I was greatly surprised and absolutely satisfied with the orderly manner in which elections were conducted." So too could we find breathless paeons to the historical milestone that had been passed. Syngman Rhee, future President, would claim the election as "the day of the rebirth of Korea" and proclaim them as "our free general election. It was our first in 4,000 years of history."
Of course, this was a sad mix of half-truth and hyperbole. It may have been the first general election, but it certainly wasn't free. As Bruce Cumings points out in Korea's Place in the Sun, the days before the election saw a country "literally in the grip of a police regime and a private terror," already "under a state of undeclared war" where the general sentiment was that Koreans "want all foreigners to get out and let them build their country." (208) The results of the election itself were easily foretold, as even non-US controlled UN inspectors would argue, "it appears that the elections are now under the control of a single party." (209) Similar to the case in Iraq, most damaging to the future consequences of the election were the boycott of politicians to both the right and left of Rhee, but moreso, the refusal of the North Koreans to take part in what they felt was a sham election. The result was, of course, the first emergence of a separate government on the peninsula, the establishment of Korea's permanent division, and the set-up for what would be a genocidal war.
Such facts did not enter the minds of the journalists, nor for that matter, the editorialists at the Times. Another word bandied about these days was also seen in May 1948. Though the disputed election would set Korea on a collision course to catastrophe, the editors felt fit to puff their chests and bellow that the election, "represents a gratifying vindication of the confidence placed in the Korean people by both the United Nations and the United States, under whose auspices and protection the election was held." They go on to scold the stubborn and "timid" who begged off the election, and praised that "the great majority which did vote did so for parties which stand for Korean independence." Given that the United States personally guaranteed Rhee's ascension through this election and that, again uncannily like Iraq, the voting rolls of peasants were linked directly to the rolls for food rations (Cumings 212), one might be forgive for thinking that only the likes of a David Brooks could have written such a laughably false and ideologically blinded ode. But, as is now hopefully quite clear, the New York Times relies on no one individual to provide boilerplate support for American imperialism. It seems to come with the territory (granting exception for the good sirs Krugman, Herbert and Ms. Dowd, presently).
This little historical journey is not meant to provide a template for predicting how things will turn out in Iraq. The arguments against making even the slightest of comparisons between the present and the past has seemed to have raised the bile and ire, or at least a few objections here and there, of both drunken lout and fellow Kossack. However, let us at least agree that one thing is certain, the press is untrustworthy to the extreme when trying to judge the affairs of our neo-colonial exploits. It is the rare jewel in the rough that provides us any insight into the context of our daily events. We have only ourselves and our own wiles to rely on. It is the mistakes of the press (and their archives :) ) and not their triumphs that give us fodder for wisdom. For we know, they never, ever, ever seem to learn.
Again, I'll turn to Korea and the Times to provide the tragic comedy proving that point. In yet another election related article (and isn't this all really about our own problems here in the US vis-a-vis the fetishization of elections as the zenith of democracy? but that can wait for another time), this time in May 1950, we see the Times getting things hopelessly wrong yet again. Noting even before the election takes place that "Red Attacks Fail to Mar Vote," we find that "despite the mortar shelling. . .by Korean Communists. . .today's South Korean general election will be quiet." These elections were read in the U.S. as signs, of course, that South Korea was 'turning a corner,' a corner made safe by, "the willingness of Korean leaders to accept [U.S.] advice." The future indeed looked bright, such that one General Roberts felt bold enough to predict that "the danger of attack from the north had been almost eliminated because of the increase in efficiency of the South Korean Army." Sadly, only one month later, the Korean War would begin in earnest. And the rest, as they sadly say, but ignorantly seem to ignore, is history.