Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy

Whatever your view of the war, you should embrace today's election

Michael Ignatieff
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer

The election in Iraq is without precedent. Never, not even in the dying days of Weimar Germany, when Nazis and Communists brawled in the streets, has there been such a concerted attempt to destroy an election through violence - with candidates unable to appear in public, election workers driven into hiding, foreign monitors forced to 'observe' from a nearby country, actual voting a gamble with death, and the only people voting safely the fortunate expatriates and exiles abroad.
Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.

Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?

Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.

The Bush administration has managed the nearly impossible: to turn democracy into a disreputable slogan.

Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neo-conservative bombast. Anti-war ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies. And then there are the ideological fools in the Arab world, and even a few in the West, who think the 'insurgents' are fighting a just war against US imperialism. This makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates - fascists.

What may also be silencing voices is the conventional wisdom that has been thrown over the debate on Iraq like a fire blanket - everyone believes that Iraq is a disaster; hence elections are doomed. As I was told by one European observer, all that remains is the final act. We are waiting, he said, for the helicopters to lift off the last Americans from the roofs of the green zone in Baghdad. For its part, the Bush administration sometimes seems to support the elections less to give the Iraqis a chance at freedom than to provide what Henry Kissinger, speaking of Vietnam, called 'a decent interval' before collapse.

Beneath the fire blanket of defeatism, everyone - for and against the war - is preparing exit strategies. Those who were against tell us that democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint, when the actual issue is whether it can survive being hijacked at gunpoint.

Other experts tell us how 'basically' violent Iraqi society is, as a way of explaining why insurgency has taken root. A more subtle kind of condescension claims that Iraq has been scarred by Ba'athism and cannot produce free minds. All this savant expertise ignores the evidence that Iraqis want free institutions and that their leaders have fought to establish them in near-impossible circumstances.

Consider the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who demanded democratic elections in 2003. Since the beginning, Sistani has refused either to ratify US occupation or to legitimise Shia extremism. In the face of incessant provocation, he has marginalised men of violence. His aides have been assassinated, but no calls to massacre the Sunnis or the occupiers have been issued.

Or consider the Kurds, who put aside their infighting, produced a common slate for the elections and kept their peshmergas from seizing Kirkuk and thus saved the country from a civil war.

Finally, consider the moderate Sunnis, who have joined the Allawi government and risked the fury of the Sunni insurgents.

The defeatism of Washington think-tanks and newspaper editorials misses a simple point: the only displays of political prudence and democratic courage have been by the much-despised Iraqis, not their supposedly all-seeing imperial benefactors. Since we lack the grace to admit that Iraqis have shown more wisdom and courage than we have, we don't trust that wisdom and courage to save Iraq now.

The Bush administration knows that, while its mistakes have cost it any real influence in Iraq, its historical reputation will depend on whether freedom takes root there. Already the revisionists are working over the facts: the best way to write the history in advance is to shift the blame onto the Iraqis themselves. Those who opposed the war collude with this revisionism in advance by giving up on the Iraqis and this, their only chance of freedom.

Let us have the decency to support people who are fighting for a free election, and let us have the honesty not to blame them for our own incompetence if they fail. There is still no reason to assume they will.

 

I heard a good editorial on NPR this afternoon. Daniel Schorr, who is unabashedly liberal (he made Nixon's "enemies list"), was congratulating President Bush for a resoundingly successful election in Iraq, in spite of the threats of violence.

 

Daniel Schorr is to be congratulated. This thing is bigger than either political party.

 

but to my disappointment many of my liberal friends here are remaining silent

 

Being that most here think that I am a very liberal guy, I'll respond.

The success or failure of this election will not be known for a good long time.

Below I have attached a copy of a New York Times article regarding another very successful election in the past. Tell me if you see any correlations.

Only History can show a good election, not the media or pundits.

The New York Times -- 09-04-1967

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to The New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened
today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election
despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million
registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals
threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy
the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary
assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching
here.


Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White
House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military
candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president,
and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.
A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President
Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in
South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional
development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave
his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of
state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government,
which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963,
when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or
exiled in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished

The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who
have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the
Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional
step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a
confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That
hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating
widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the
Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the
figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly.
Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in
elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the
American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent
because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than
in the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome
surprise. The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was
62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious
concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to
render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging
from the reports from Saigon.

 

Let's hope the Commies don't invade Iraq.

 

Ken,

I'd forgotten all about that election. Yes, I see the parallels.

While I am delighted that so many Iraqis turned out for the election, I agree with you wholeheartedly that only time will tell if it was successful and really meant anything or not.

 

I received this as an email today, quite timely.