Posted on 12/30/2005 7:50:22 PM PST by Kaslin
Editor's Note: After much deliberation and discussions among the Townhall.com editorial staff, we are proud to name the Iraqi people as our first annual Citizen of the Year. John Hanley, who served as a civilian with the Department of Defense and the Department of State in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, has provided some excellent first-hand analysis of our selection. Enjoy!
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2005 was the year of the vote in Iraq.
On three separate days this year, Iraqis had the opportunity to leave their homes, walk to their polling stations, and cast their votes. This simplest of civic duties, something that people everywhere should enjoy as a basic human dignity, was made infinitely more complex by widely circulated flyers reading, “This street will run red with the blood of voters.”
Anyone in Iraq during January of 2005 had at least some fear that such flyers were not merely idle threats. The month leading up to the country’s first real election witnessed hundreds of insurgent attacks. In Baghdad, some of the Iraqis that my colleagues and I worked with expressed doubt as to whether they would be able to vote, despite the fact that they sincerely wanted to. Every Iraqi adult had to sit down and ask a very basic question about whether the exercise of democracy was worth the life of his or her family. I have to admit with more than a little embarrassment that without the benefit of hindsight, I had my own uncertainty about what would happen at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Yeah Iraq!
Finally, someone with some sense giving out an award...
The Iraq people deserve all kinds of credit.
Indeed they do
"The Iraqi people" is ok with me as a selection although I would rather have seen "the fighting men and women of the Allies" as the selection.
Good choice, but it would be nice also to include the coalition forces who made it possible.
Excellent! And if Time had guts and integrity, they'd have named the Iraqi people, too.
I agree, coalition forces deserve credit for making those elections happen, but we won't see that in the MSM unless Hill's President.
I still think Pence should have won this award.
I give 'em about a year after we finally leave, if we ever find the guts to do so. They're Moslems, after all; the natural progression is chaos, poverty, dictatorship and ignorance. Our job will be to keep them from once again becoming a threat to normal cultures.
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