The Ming Report

FOUR MORE WEEKS

October 4, 2004 - Suddenly it is October and the excited gasps that heralded a seemingly growing edge for the incumbent President of the United States have faded along with the edge shown by the polls. In just four weeks those Americans who choose to participate will go to polling places in schools, churches, fire houses, garages, and private homes and cast ballots to indirectly select America’s term limited monarch. If recent history is any guide only a minority of the citizens who are eligible and registered to vote will take the trouble to participate. If history’s guide is followed it will not be enough that the successful candidate is the selection of a plurality of the minority that bothers to participate, the outcome will be decided by the geographical distribution of that minority who do choose to choose. The prognosticators, contestants in their own contest to come as close as they can to the ultimate result, are again clustered in their conviction that the contestants are as close as Siamese twins.

It has been a slow news night. The United States Military has announced that it has successfully reduced the rebel stronghold in Samarra killing more than 100 insurgents and capturing 80 others. The 2,000 fighters that the military said occupied the city on Thursday have faded away. The media is silent as to the details but the military announces that in the largest offensive operation of the war so far the objectives have been met; the center of the city has been conquered and we are in the process of turning the city over to Iraqi police and national guards. Nothing is released with respect to allied casualties but the news of one dead US soldier leaked out early. The lid is on. There has been no news leaking out from embedded reporters leaving the electorate with an unreasoning hope that the two days of urban fighting has been relatively bloodless – at least on the American side. No one counts the blood shed by Iraqis.

The other war news is that the American air campaign against the tough nut of Fallujah is going on apace. Military spokesmen assuring us that the targets are carefully chosen to surgically strike only the followers of Jordanian Abu Musa Zarqawi. As they emphatically deny that the casualties in Fallujah include women and children; that the targets are chosen based on confirmed intelligence they share the TV screens with images of ordinary Iraqis digging in the rubble with their hands and pulling the limp body of a five year-old terrorist from the ruins. A man, the child cradled in his arms cries out. According to the translator he asks, “Does he look like a terrorist?”

The good news, if there is any, is that as the deadline to register to vote approaches the lines of newly registered voters are long. Election officials are swamped and the system is overloaded – especially in the swing states. It is good news if that means that more Americans are electing to participate in the choice this November. It is better news if the man selected by the Electoral College or the Supreme Court this time is also the one who attracts a plurality of the minority that chooses to participate. That is very important to America and to five year old boys everywhere who look like terrorists to the military.

Remember there are only four more weeks to go.