It's official...
Iraqis are voting! I congratulate them and wish them well.
Update 1/30/05: Polls are closed. An early report of up to 72% turn out seems to have been somewhat high. Estimates now peg the number at 60% of eligible voter turn out, or about 8 million. Pretty impressive considering the threats of carnage by al Zarqawi, even in the Sunni Triangle. Sadly, there were 35 innocents killed plus 9 dead bombing scum reported but even in Fallujah, women and men came out to vote! If this is all al Zarqawi has left in his atrocious bag of tricks, he's on the tail end of his joy ride. Little Green Footballs has two emails from Iraq that are definitely worth a read.
posted by Craig R. Harmon at 11:19 PM
13 Comments:
The link on the very bottom of your page needs:
(less than symbol)/a(greater than symbol)
at the end of it...
Hi!
http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/01/iraqi-elections.html...
Here I describe all the parties that participate, and try to judge who are the good and bad guys.
Thank you. I'm sure there are lots of blogs like yours; they're just hard to find. So many of the ones I run across are harshly partisan and full of petty attacks on whole imaginary groups of people. Anyway, just wanted to encourage you to keep up the good work.
Hopefully, Zarqawi and Co. are not the equivalent of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. I honestly don't believe that they are.
First of all, their numbers are much smaller as a percentage of the total population. The numbers are more like 20% Sunni, 80% Shia.
Second, the Sunnis, due to their long recent history of oppression of the Shia. There is a true hatred of Sunnis among Shia. They are unlikely to be willing to be bullied into the old arrangement.
Part of the problem in Vietnam was the feeling among many of the South Vietnamese that the political/philosophical issues between Democracy and Communism were less important than being rid of the foreign troops. At least that's what they thought before the Viet Cong overran the South and set upon their murderous and destructive retaliation. The large (in the millions) numbers of refugees fleeing the country for Democratic America afterwards shows that many South Vietnamese underwent a slight revision of their estimate of the political/philosophical distinctions between Democracy and Communism.
I very much doubt that the Shia will make the same mistake.
If your point is that we mustn't "over-hype" the importance of these elections (thank you very much, Senator Kerry), I truely do not think that that is possible in this case.
Here is my hope regarding these elections: that it will be seen as legitimate by the international community and by the great majority of Iraqis; that nations that currently are contributing little or nothing at all to the Iraq situation will relent and at least participate in training of Iraqi Military and Police; that Iraqis will co-operate less with the "insurgents" and to a greater degree in driving them out and defeating them.
Of course, only time will tell but I am optimistic.
Yes, there are similarities. My point was not that I thought that you thought that the North Vietnamese were the same as the Iraqis. What I took from your first post was that the fate of Iraq's democracy was as likely to succeed as Vietnam's. That may not have been your point and I apologize if I have attributed to you intentions that were not your own. My comments in response were my reasons why I am more bullish on Iraq's chances of weathering its insurgency, whatever the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam and I stand by them.
Certainly, the smaller percentage of insurgents accounts for the smaller numbers of dead in Iraq. They also account for my optimism regarding the chances that democracy will succeed in Iraq and my confidence that the insurgency will fail. I simply do not believe that the much smaller number of terrorists will succeed.
To expand upon that, the large turn-out of voters over-all says to me that the majority will not stand for it. The fact that, in areas where the population consists of Sunnis and Shia, Sunnis participated in the elections in spite of the call for Sunnis to boycott, tells me that, even among the minority Sunni community, the lure of self-determination is stronger than centuries-long religious hatred. Heck, even in some areas under terrorist control, a surprising number of Sunnis voted. A majority of people so willing to risk life and limb to involve themselves in a process so hateful to al Zarqawi et al. are, in my opinion, unlikely to allow murderous thugs defeat them.
Certainly, any talk of what might happen in Iraq is hypothetical, the trick is to hypothesize an outcome and then give reasons based upon what we think we know from the past and present to defend our hypothesis. Of course the Shiite majority might end up bullying or even committing genocide against the Sunni minority. My hypothesis is that this will not occur. For reasons I put forth the following:
The Shiites are religious people who have long known oppression. That is not to say that religious people cannot engage in vengeful violence, of course, they can. However, Shiites also tend to be less extremist than Sunnis. I believe that their desire for a just society, which would be antithetical to oppression of minorities let alone genocide, will win out over their desire for revenge.
The insurgents have gone out of their way to prod the Shia into violent response against the Sunnis. The Grand Ayatollah al Sistani, the most respected Shiite clergy in Iraq, has ever been a moderating voice urging against retribution. Could he be waiting until the occupation ends and our troops, which would be sure to intercede to stop the violence, leave before beginning such actions? Yes, but I do not believe it. He has a history of religious writtings and decisions that, I believe, show a propensity for moderation.
Furthermore, al Sistani has been insistent that the Sunnis be represented in the elected governing body, no matter how few Sunnis vote. He recognizes that any civilized society must represent all within the society. These simply are not the ideas that lead to oppression, but to justice in the best sense of the word.
Yes, I know that it was the North Vietnamese that were the Communists. My point was that many South Vietnamese cooperated with the Viet Cong, thinking that life under Communism could be no worse than life under civil war. After the overrun, many learned otherwise the hard way. Many others left because they learned the easy way, i. e., they could still leave because they were still alive. And yes this could happen when the Shia take over, but for the reasons I mention above, I do not believe it will.
Yes, the jab at Senator Kerry is what I was trying to avoid here at Continuum. Thanks for calling me on it.
I have attempted to detail what I believe to be very good reasons to believe that what happened in Vietnam will not happen in Iraq. Furthermore, as you state, what happened in Vietnam happened because the American people lost the will to complete our mission there and insisted that we pull out. I believe that whatever party or parties end up ruling Iraq, they will not make the mistake of insisting upon multi-national troop pull out before a.) there is stability in Iraq and b.) the Iraqi Police and Troops are capable of securing their own peace. Civil war, with Iran and Syria contributing to that war, is simply not in the government's best interest.
Could I be wrong? Could your hypothesis prove more accurate than mine? Yes, it could. These, however, are the reasons I believe it will not.
It beats the last ballot the Iraqis got to vote in, which amounted to:
Do you want:
1.) Saddam Hussein as President for life, or
2.) To be tortured and then you and your family to be murdered?
Voting required upon pain of death.
It's all a matter of perspective, Mike.
First of all, the list aspect was well publicized. There's nothing new there. Actually, since Iraqis have no history of parties but millennia of religious and tribal identity, what does the author expect, a two party system? Individuals should travel about the country shaking hands with people who would send a down-syndrom child out to blow up himself along with his fellow Iraqis? Does he/she seriously suppose that Iraqis would vote for any individual or group not of his or her own tribe or religious identity? This election was never a vote for a final government but for a purely temporary one to replace the Bremer selected government that replaced Bremer himself. It's purpose was to give the Iraqis the chance to decide, by their own hands (or finger) the make-up of those who would draw up their country's constitution. However imperfectly, that they have done.
No, the Iraqi's will not elect their prime minister. On the other hand, Americans do not elect their President but States' Electors who select the President. My understanding is that, like the National Assembly, the Prime Minister is equally temporary until Constitutional elections can take place. For this, of course, they need a Constitution, the drawing up of which is what this election was, all along, intended to accomplish. What will Constitutional elections look like? I don't know, since the final Constitution does not yet exist.
As for local representation, again, this government is temporary primarily for the purpose of drafting a constitution. Is it possible that there will be over representation of one group over another, yes. However as I pointed out above, the Shia majority, under the advise of Ayatollah al Sistani, intends to include representation for the Sunni minority, however few Sunnis vote. Might a local, rather than a national constituency have been better? Perhaps, but drawn up how, geographically? The country is not divided into States or Provinces. We should have waited even longer to establish these political territories before a Constitution was drawn up? What ever happened to the virtue of Iraqification? Most complain that, if anything, it has been too long in coming.
There were regions of the US where Military personel were never able to vote because ballots were sent out too late, and we're not under constant bombardment from insurgents. I didn't hear any Democrats decrying the elections based upon this particular disenfranchisement. Iraq is under constant bombardment. It is regrettable, but hardly surprising that those areas that had the most problems were those regions where the insurgents' threats were most likely to be carried out because that is where their influence is greatest. It is unfortunate, but there is no one to be blamed but the insurgents. Besides, I remember reading that residents in both Fallujah and Mosul did vote. Not that turn out was a high percentage of the cities' populations, but that no one in either Fallujah or Mosul voted is simply not true. Again, no one thought it would be perfect. Check out the irregularities in Milwaukee. 230 years and the US has yet to have perfect elections.
As for who set the rules for the elections, who should have set the rules for the elections? Until the elections, there was no possibility for anyone but the Bremer appointed Election Commission to set rules for an Election.
As to the sixth point, I don't know what to say. A free press is necessary in a free society. Will the Iraq be completely free under the temporary National Assembly? Aparently not. I suspect that it will be freer than under Saddam. Again, it's a matter of perspective. Privatization. The author perhaps prefers Socialism? Communism? What?
Bush bashing aside, was the election perfect? No one said it would be or expected it to be but it was one heck of a lot better than the prior (Saddam's) system: more free and much more representative of the will of the Iraqi people than the temporary government it replaces. That was the goal.
Since we're putting up other people's thoughts for consideration, I will link to, rather than copy out whole, this article by Mark Styn entitled, "Iraq is going to be just fine" from the Sunday January 30 Chicago Sun-Times.
Military Ballots: Sorry. I was passing on information that, upon Googling this afternoon, proves to be untrue. You are correct.
Forced to Vote: Terrible but not altogether unforseeable. Being from Chicago, I can tell you that, under Mayor Daily the Elder, the dead were routinely dragged from their coffins, kicking and screaming, to the polls and forced to vote. The Rank and File were routinely bussed by Union goombas to vote for "Mayor for Life" Daily.
Ink stained fingers: Horrible but I fail to see how this reflects badly upon the legitimacy of the election. It, rather, highlights three things: 1. the bravery of the Iraqis who voted--they had to know that permanently ink stained fingers would mark them as voters to the bad guys; 2. the significance of the elections in the estimation of the bad guys--they know now just how unpopular they are; 3. the brutality of the bad guys who must be defeated.
Controverial directions: This is a distinct possibility and one that would be far from ideal. However, that was always a possibility when dealing with self-governance and majority-rule. It will certainly make it more difficult to bring the country together.
Underinformed electorate: Two points: 1. to quote one of your sources, Juan Cole, "Nevertheless, enough was known about the major party and coalition lists to allow most Iraqis to make a decision" and 2. the majority of Americans believe that they are voting for a President in their quadrennial elections, Constitutional facts to the otherwise notwithstanding. If voting were restricted to the well informed, very few would be allowed to vote.
I'm grateful, Mike, for your viewpoint on this, as in all of our discussions.
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Union Workers: May not be government officials but the are people who may, if they feel that you are less than enthusiastic for the Man, at their discression, have you removed from the Union, which, in those days, meant that you didn't work or break your kneecaps, which, even today means that you'll have a tough time doing any kind of work. If you didn't work you had a tough time putting food on the table. This was not unakin to the situation described in Iraq.
Radically Islamic: No I wouldn't be comfortable with that. I'm pretty certain that that's the reason that Bush was initially against a one-person/one-vote election insisted upon by al Sistani. On the other hand, as I think I mentioned, al Sistani also insists upon representation in the council even by factions that did not vote in representatively large numbers. I won't repeat my other arguments as you can read them above.
A vast difference: Yes, I concede that. They were, however, as I understand it, indirectly, through the elected council, electing a Prime Minister. Perhaps not all that vast a difference.
Curiouser and Curiouser...
An elections expert from the UN, Carina Perelli, is being reported in the Guardian, which has hardly been a booster of the Iraqi venture, as praising the vote in Iraq. Praise for a vote while Iraq is under US occupation is not something I expected to hear from a UN representative. They have been not just sceptical but downright critical of all things having to do with the US lead actions in Iraq. Here is just one slice:
"It is, I think, a message for all of us that beyond our discussions, beyond our diagnosis, beyond our expertise, normal people have something to say about their destiny," she said of the vote. "In that sense, I think it was an extremely moving and good election."It is a short but worthwhile read.
Yeh, that probably explains it.
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