Reply #138: I'm not the government, I'm NDI [View All]

[Donna Zen]

The country now is ruled by militias, mullahs, and warlords. The simple citizen is not allowed to have his own rights, to say freely what he wants.” He put part of the blame on the Americans. “They are not caring much for a simple Iraqi citizen. They care for a chief of a tribe here, a mullah there, a religious man here, a militiaman here, head of a party there.”

It was possible to find Iraqis who were already coming forward to lay claim to their country’s political future. They were few in number, vastly outmatched in money and power by the parties and the militias, and they were, I thought, the toughest people on earth. Sometimes there were Americans ready to support them.

The National Democratic Institute was an organization funded largely by the U.S. government and affiliated with the Democratic Party’; it operated with relative independence, under the direction of the National Endowment for Democracy. The institute’s purpose was to find the “simple citizens” in a place like Iraq and help them to participate in democratic political life. This tended to be obscure, poorly funded work...

The workshop in Hilla took place in the city’s former secret-police headquarters, which had become a human-rights center. Forty Iraqis--including a political science professor and an unemployed sports instructor--had traveled at some risk to the attend the class. They listened intently and took careful notes as Dettman (NDI) stood, shoulders hunched, before a flip chart and resented his ten-step program on message development and voter contact. ..Dettman had told me earlier, “Politics is the art of getting people to vote for you. It’s applicable all over the world. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have a job.”

“I’m not the government,” Dettman said. “I’m NDI...”

Assassins’ Gate, G. Parker, (409-410)

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NOTE: If you hate democracy or self-government, then you will bash NED and refuse to understand what it does or how it works. I am proud to disagree with you.