Posted on 08/10/2004 1:50:13 AM PDT by kattracks
With all the attention focused on Alan Keyes crashing an election where he doesn’t belong, comparably little has been paid to a potentially far more troubling election participant: international monitors “observing” our November elections.
In a news story that could not have been better crafted by The Onion the Bush administration has formally invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which the U.S. is a member, to observe this fall’s election.
Though the OSCE delegation has no authority to do anything substantive, the very idea that international monitors have any business being in the U.S. is insulting. Any organization comprised of member nations such as France and Germany who saw no evil in Saddam’s tyranny and continue turning a blind eye to Arafat’s iron fist clearly lacks the moral compass to pass judgment on any nation, let alone the United States.
Is the U.S. system perfect? No. But is it the best in the world? No question.
Nowhere in the world do voters have as much information at their fingertips: four all-news cable outlets, three broadcast network newscasts, three or more local news telecasts, one or more local talk radio stations, local and national newspapers, hundreds of magazines, thousands of web sites and web logs, and countless knuckleheads (including this one) ready to share their opinions with anyone who will listen.
That’s real democracy. Casting ballots is merely the capstone to freedom. We don’t need international monitors to tell us that America has the greatest foundation of freedom in the world.
We live in a country where someone of meager means can use a dingy computer to start a blog and influence voters, maybe by the dozens, or maybe by the thousands. We live in a country where someone with something to say can reach hundreds or even millions by calling up a talk radio host or writing a letter to the editor.
We live in a country where a billionaire born in Hungary is allowed to have inordinate influence in our elections. But he’s no wizard behind the curtain—thanks to a free press, Americans are well-aware of George Soros’ efforts. If they don’t mind and decide to side with Soros, then oh well. That’s freedom.
None of which is to say that there is no room for improvement. Long before Florida’s chads hung in the balance, America has had “procedural” issues on election day.
Chicago’s Daley-driven machine is legendary for its uncanny ability to raise the dead on the first Tuesday of every November. Just outside of Chicago, two suburban GOP strongholds, Chicago Heights and Cicero, have received unwanted attention in recent years for their own election chicanery. That’s just in one 30-mile radius.
International observers, however, are not going to investigate real ballot stuffing or have anywhere near the manpower to do anything beyond a cursory overview of polling practices at a handful of precincts.
The OSCE presence this November, though, is eagerly anticipated by many disgruntled leftist members of Congress, none more so than Barbara Lee (D-CA). Lee last month had spearheaded a Congressional Black Caucus request that the United Nations send a squadron of observers.
While not getting a dream team from the body that bestows equal moral legitimacy to Kim Jong-Il as George W. Bush, Lee nonetheless expressed pleasure at the invite to the OSCE: “I am pleased that the State Department responded by acting on this need for international monitors.”
Lee, you see, knows that the 2000 elections were a sham; Michael Moore told her so. The heavyweight filmmaker’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” made her realize that “the 2000 presidential elections were rife with deception and fraud.”
The conspiratorial Congresswoman and Moore share something else in common: each one opposed the war in Afghanistan. Lee, a woman with greater fondness for Fidel Castro than George W. Bush, was the lone “no” vote when Congress authorized war in the immediate aftermath of September 11.
Sending international monitors to the U.S. is akin to Moore’s propaganda piece showing Iraqi children laughing and playing in Baghdad during Saddam’s ruthless reign, conveniently ignoring images of Saddam’s torture chambers, rape rooms, and hundreds of thousands of mass graves.
Even after the liberation of 23 million Iraqis, more than a billion still live under the thumb of tyranny, yet people purportedly concerned with freedom and human rights have decided to monitor elections in the country that best exemplifies both.
Come to think of it, maybe an inviting an OSCE delegation isn’t so crazy after all—as long as they follow one simple instruction: watch and learn.
Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.
My grandfather from Chicago has been voting faithfully for Democrats ever since his death.
<< My grandfather from Chicago has been voting faithfully for Democrats ever since his death. >>
Out here in the third world in which I have long lived and worked, folks who have never visited the United States of America and who, if they applied, would not be given a US Visa by even September 11 2001-facilitating Mary "Saudi Express" Ryan -- or by Dianne Andruch -- every day register to vote as resident-abroad Americans.
And vote by the scores of thousands in every one of our nation's "elections."
So -- tell me, if you can, of a single post-JFK and/or current "DemocRAT" politician who was elected without the benefit of massive electoral fraud -- or worse.
...which would not be happening if the Chicago Tribune had not forced the unsealing of Jack Ryan's divorce papers.
When will the Chicago Tribune demand the release of John Heinz Kerry's military medical records?
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