Principles 3

After the January 30 election in Iraq there were only two ways to go: either to accept that, whatever the arguments about the rights and wrongs of the war, the terms of legitimacy in Iraq had now been redefined, redefined by an act of popular will; or to try to de-legitimize that election. Entirely predictably, since he can be relied upon to favour the more unsavoury political option, Seumas Milne today goes the second way:

The Iraqi elections may have looked good on TV and allowed Kurdish and Shia parties to improve their bargaining power, but millions of Iraqis were unable or unwilling to vote, key political forces were excluded, candidates' names were secret, alleged fraud widespread, the entire system designed to maintain US control and Iraqis unable to vote to end the occupation.

Note the (Seumless) contempt for the voters of Iraq, and the courage they showed in voting, contained in that casual 'looked good on TV'. Note the elision in 'key political forces were excluded' - with no mention of the fact that 'key political forces' boycotted the election as opposed to being excluded from it by someone else.

Milne demonstrates, all the same, that he at least has some understanding of the possible complexity of principles (see the two posts previous to this one). External 'influence' or 'interference' in a country can be better and it can be worse:

[O]n Tuesday... at least 500,000... demonstrators took to the streets to show solidarity with embattled Syria and reject US and European interference in Lebanon.
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But the pressure on Syria has plenty of other motivations: its withdrawal stands to weaken one of the last independent Arab regimes, however sclerotic, open the way for a return of western and Israeli influence in Lebanon...
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[A] real programme for liberty and democracy in the Middle East... would need to include... a withdrawal of all foreign forces from the region.

If it's Syria ('embattled', 'independent') in Lebanon, it's better; if it's the US or Israel - oh, or Europe - it's worse. And that's for a 'real programme for liberty and democracy'.