While I agree with others in the blogosphere in being outraged that OSCE inspectors monitors will be present for the November elections (at the invitation of Colin Powell), I think we should keep things in perspective. After all, what will the OSCE do if they find anything amiss? What can they do?
A European alliance has no sovereignty over the Constitution, at least not according to the Constitution—with federal judges citing international law these days, who knows if the Constitution will even be evoked in federal law these days?
What is likely to happen if the inspectors (oops, I did it again!) monitors find something is that they will do…nothing. Super-satirist Scrappleface has the best take:
Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, has agreed to serve as chief monitor of U.S. elections on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), however Mr. Blix said he needs more time to do the job right.
“November is just around the corner,” said Mr. Blix, , “My European team will need much more time than that to be ready. We’ll need six-to-nine months just to discover if there are, in fact, elections in the United States.”
Yep, the full strength and resolve of a European coalition will be upon us if there is left so much as a hanging chad. I can already see Jacques Chirac inspecting ballots. Democrats and Republicans alike should be concerned at this—we didn’t spill blood for our freedom only to give it away.
It is really weird how differently these stories can be reported in the different countries. I was under the impression (from the news reports I get here) that in the past few years, these monitors had been monitering elections in countries that they consider to have fair elections in order to learn from their good examples, hoping to learn what they can about ways to run fair elections in more fragile democracies. I thought that it was under this program that they were invited in–that they weren’t monitoring the election to see if it’s fair, but under the assumption that it IS fair.
I don’t know enough about it to really have an informed opinion, but my dopplar radar is reading “possible tempest in a teapot”.
Rebecca, you’re right about the OSCE monitoring countries that have fair elections—and it’s not really the OSCE that I’m worried about (although the OSCE has monitored but accomplished little in some countries with less than fair elections).
Those that prompted the invitation of the OSCE (a group of Democratic lawmakers) invited them under the premise that our elections were unfair.
So, my “outrage” is not directed so much towards the OSCE, but to those who would seek to use them to subvert the sovereignty of our country (which by law couldn’t really happen).
Oops…forgot I commented here. Okay….that explains it a little. I know the OSCE has been ineffectual, but that just makes them even less scary.
I still sort of see it like this:
wrongheaded motives for seeking invitation + ineffectual organization + laws protecting sovereignty = not much of anything