In the Red Zone

ILLIBERALS

The results are posted and in the Land Between the Rivers, the deal-making has begun.  By all accounts, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is out, Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani are in, while secular Shia leader and on again-off again U.S. ally Ahmad Chalabi is proving adept at clinging to the greasy pole of post-Saddam Iraqi power.  (As for the Sunnis, we can only heave a collective sigh, quel dommage...)

Also demonstrating a keen--perhaps cunning is a better word--grasp of the shifting terrain of power is Moqtada al-Sadr, whom I mistakenly counted out after the elections:  according to Dexter Filkins in yesterday's Times, the chipmunk-cheeked cleric and his allies "appear likely to emerge as the largest single block inside the Shiite alliance with as many as 21 seats."  Infuriating, to say the least, considering he is responsible for the murders of innumerable Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers, and perhaps a pro-American Ayatollah or two...

Nor should we overlook the person whom I still believe will probably remain the behind-the-scenes power-broker, SCIRI head Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

All of this raises fears of Islamist domination of Iraq, manifested in close Iranian ties and the imposition of shari'a over at least the southern portion of the country.  Indeed, Basra has already fallen under strict fundamentalist control.  Should the Shia prove less responsible than they have to this point, and try to "Basra-ize" the rest of the nation, civil war could erupt.  (This, on top of other explosive issues involving the Kurds, Kirkuk and the collection and distribution of oil money.) 

In this interval between ballot victories and cabinet formation, what fascinates me are reactions from foreign observers--especially those who are turning their political convictions inside-out in order to discredit the Bush Administration.  A standard bit of this fare is "Have Iraqis voted for a dictatorship?"  asked by Muqtedar Khan in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Star.  And the ever-dependable Juan Cole rounds up various pundits--for example, Robin Wright in yesterday's Washington Post, Stanley Reed in Business Week --who point out that the Shia victors of the elections are not exactly the Jeffersonian democrats Washington hoped would take the reins of power.  This, of course, is the left's fall-back position on Iraq:  okay, the election went well, but before you war-mongering, Bush-excusing, in-the-pocket-of-Israel-and-Halliburton neo-conservative Christian triumphalists declare victory, look what you've wrought--a dictatorship in Iraq!

Yes, yes.  And where were these hand-wringing liberals during the Vietnam War?  When younger and more hirsute Coles of the day marched in solidarity with the NLF, did these concerns about totalitarianism not seem conspicuously absent?  If academics are so concerned about the loss of civil liberties, why do they continue to idolize Fidel Castro--not to mention Saint Che of Rosario?  Foucault, let us remember, endorsed the 1979 Iranian Revolution.  A few years later, when we young punk rockers were dancing to the Clash, did we ever concern ourselves with the Communist dictatorship they championed in Nicaragua?  Later still, how many leftists looked with alarm at Hong Kong's absorption by the fascist People's Republic of China? 

Once again, Iraq seems to fall outside the humanitarian regard of the left.  Among these bien pensants, reactionary gunmen are called "insurgents" or the "resistance" while a man brave enough to stand up to the fascists is considered a U.S. "puppet."  Then, astonishingly, when the Iraqis actually elect a government--no puppets, these Shias leader, nicht wahr?--these same voices look upon the victors with skepticism and fear. 

The hypocrisy cuts both ways, of course.  Neo-cons now talk the talk of free elections and feminism and civil rights--the very foundation blocks of democracy they put out of reach of other countries for decades during the Cold War, and continue to do so with nations like Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  But at least we are on the correct side of history now--at least we stand for something.  The left put its energies into opposing the invasion of Iraq; it gave--and gives--tacit moral support to those who "resist" the liberation and reconstruction of the country; it poo-pooed elections and is now trying to downplay the results.  What does it want?  What alternatives does it put forth?  What does it bring to the discussion of the war and democracy besides a morbid and increasingly disquieting obsession with the "carnage"--to use Professor Cole's favorite word.  Where was their concern for the death of innocent people when the Communist Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a mass slaughter house?

The irony, of course, is that for all its faults and the imperfections of process and results, the Bush Administration is doing exactly what the left demanded of Washington during the Cold War:  let nations determine their own course.  If that course produces a Communist dictatorship, that is acceptable; should it produce any other form of government, that, apparently, is not.  Again, I ask:  why is Iraq different?

I don't mean to diminish the threat of an Islamic dictatorship:  it is indeed a serious issue, one that America's right- and left-wing progressives should unite to oppose.  I asked Nour a couple of days ago how she felt about the elections; with typical succinctness, she replied, "I feel terrible.  I see what the religious parties are doing to my liberal Basra."  No, the radical green flag flying over the citadels of Sindbad's former port of call is not a happy development.  It may be, however, the development a majority of the Iraqi people want.  And, this in turn, presents us with a dilemma involving majority will, civil rights, the notion of "illiberal democracy"--and perhaps the Arab mindset in general.  Sugar-coating matters in order to support the Bush Administration, or using it to bludgeon the architects of the war does nothing for America--and even less for the Iraqi people.

UPDATE:  Abbas Kadhim lists the percentage of women members of the new Assembly, per party slate.  A total of 58 about of 275 gives a percentage of over 20 percent.  (Notice the UIA:  32 percent; also note that the Kurds, who oppose shari'a did not hold to the "one-third" women rule).  For the record, 79  women hold seats in the U.S. Congress, for a total of 14.8 percent. 

IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS

Reported to me by Nour in Basra and confirmed by Abbas Khadim, whose site I quote here:

Winners (based on 30,750 votes/seat):

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA): 4,075,295 (132 seats)
The Kurdistan Alliance: 2,175,551 (71 seats)
The Iraqi List (PM Ayad Allawi): 1,168,943 (38 seats)
Iraqis or Iraqiyyoun (President Ghazi al-Yawer): 150,680 (5 seats)
The Turkomen Iraqi Front: 93,480 (3 seats)
National Independent Elites and Cadres Party: 69,938 --Surprise! (2 seats)
The Communist Party: 69,920 -- they expected to win big! (2 seats)
The Islamic Kurdish Society: 60,592 (2 seats)
The Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq (Shi'i): 43,205 (1 seat)
The National Democratic Alliance: 36,795 (1 seat)
National Rafidain List (Assyrian Christians): 36,255 (1 seat)
The Reconciliation and Liberation Entity (Sunni/nationalist): 30,796 (1 seat)

The number is not 275 seats yet. The balance of the seats will be distributed among the parties on the basis of their gains in total votes (whatever that means!)

Losers (no seats):

Iraqi Islamic Party (main Sunni group headed by Mohsen Abdel-Hamid): 21,342 -- they would have done much better had the Sunni Arabs voted in large numbers.
The Monarchy Movement (Jordan's best hope) 13,470
Assembly of Independent Democrats (headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi): 12,728
National Democratic Party (headed by Naseer Kamel al-Chaderchi, Sunni lawyer and member of the former Iraqi Governing Council): 1,603

Total votes: 8,550,571

Invalid votes: 94,305

And, giving credit was it's due, Juan Cole has an informative analysis.  (Ignore the pro forma egregious swipe at Bush.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Symbols of sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqi people through their government.  The republican palace is one of the most important symbols, it must be returned to the Iraqi people.

--  Ahmad Chalabi, speaking to the New York Sun's Eli Lake, about the "International Zone" (a.k.a, the "Green Zone"), which sits in the center of the Baghdad, and his plan to open the heavily-guarded compound to city residents.

Chalabi evidently told Lake that he had "accepted an informal nomination to be prime minister" from "prominent members" of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the Shia slate which emerged victorious after the January 30 elections. 

One can't help agreeing with Chalabi about the Green Zone, and especially the Presidential Palace.  This structure--an unholy combination of Babylonian dimensions and Arabian kitsch, its construction and maintenance costs wrung from the blood of the Iraqi people--is the perfect symbol for Saddam's brutal psyche.  No better fate could befall it than transformation into offices for the new Iraqi government and a museum dedicate to the victims of the fallen regime.

RIYADH FELLOWS

It's slipped a bit below the media radar screen, but today another election takes place in the Middle East--in Saudi Arabia, of all places.

The Financial Times' Roula Khalaf reports that last-minute campaigning is still under way in the House of Saud's "first nationwide elections" in its history.  To give you an idea of how rare this occasion is, the mutawa'a, or religious police, actually relaxed their ban on public displays of advertisements bearing images of the human face to allow campaign posters. 

The elections, staggered over a period of three months, involve some 700 candidates running for Riyadh's city council.  Voters will choose only half the Saudi capital's municipal government, with half appointed by the government.  And, as Khalaf notes, the victors will have very limited powers.

Land ownership and distribution--a controversial issue because many plots are handed out to princes the al-Saud family--remain in the hands of the ministry of municipalities, which is headed by a royal. 

It may not surprise you to learn that the Saudis forbid women from running for office, or from voting.  Actually, this ban was a surprise of sorts to Saudi women, because the government had originally said that they could participate in the elections.  Indeed, according to the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terror website, in November, 2004, "at least three women" indicated they might run for a city council slot. 

But really, we should probably cut the Saudis a break here.  As Raid Qusti wrote in an Arab News op-ed last December entitled "Why Women's Voting Is Complicated," the logistics of allowing females to cast their ballots are very difficult indeed.  Why just imagine,

If a single woman won and became a member of the municipality council that would mean the government would have to construct a separate building for her.  Whether she one female, two or ten, Saudi law forbids men and women to work in the same establishment.

As OpinionJournal's James Taranto points out, this restriction could also ban men from serving in the Saudi government, but never mind.  As Qusti advises us, we need to look at Saudi Arabia "as a whole and weigh the reality of things."  What is the weight of absurdity, anyway?   

FREE TO BE ILLIBERAL

They could never do enough, and always did too much.

That line often echoed in my thoughts as I traveled through Iraq between the fall of Saddam and the beginning of the serious "insurgency" a year later.  At the time, I was thinking of Iraqi attitudes toward the Coalition Provisional Authority--on one hand, anger that the U.S.-led "occupation" couldn't immediately solve the nation's problems; on the other, resentment at what they perceived as American manipulation of their affairs.  It struck me then, as now, as the verdict history will pass on America's post-Saddam reconstruction efforts in Iraq.      

It is also a plaint that runs through Lawrence Kaplan's cover story in the latest New Republic, "The Last Casualty:  the tragic end to a liberal Iraq."  A strong supporter of the war, Kaplan has written a forceful, angry piece that deserves serious consideration and reply.

His basic point is solid.  Squeezed between fascist terrorists and conservative religious parties, liberalism--or, a secular, pluralistic, progressive mindset (what Iraqi liberals themselves call "scientific")--has virtually vanished from the political spectrum.  After visiting the heavily guarded Baghdad home of one leading moderate, Kaplan poses the rhetoric question:  "How can there be liberalism in a country where liberals cannot leave their homes?"  Later, he notes

The war has sucked the oxygen out of the liberal experiment.  Iraqi opinion polls, for instance, which showed majorities favoring a secular state a year ago, show the reverse today--a poll by IRI [International Republican Institute] released last August reported that 70 percent of Iraqis would prefer an Islamic state.

This "Islamic state" is already taking form in Basra, according to reports.  Add to this a Sunni minority who would prefer to see the reinstatement of the Nazi-inspired Baath Party and the peril to "scientific" politics is clear.

Kaplan blames the U.S.  "Only stability can arrest these trends," he contends, adding,

When it comes to liberalism in Iraq, there's no getting around a simple truth:  NGOs do what they can; Iraqi liberals do what they can; but, in the end, only the U.S. military has the ability to create stability--and hence, democracy--here. 

In short, America's failure to stabilize the country after the fall of Saddam allowed an fascist insurgency and a religious uprising to take place in the center and southern portions of Iraq, crippling liberalism's chances to take root and flourish.  Worse, Kaplan notes, the CPA did very little to fund existing liberal organizations.  He notes that while certain NGOs have provided support for "scientific" organizations,

the U.S. Agency for International Development's signature $43 million program to support civil society has been tied up in bureaucratic knots for a year. 

Worse, Iran has provided $20 million to Shia religious parties, while Washington has declined to pick favorites, attempting to remain neutral and "evenhanded" as possible.  Writes Kaplan,

This may seem like evidence of high-mindedness.  But the United States boasts a long history of favoring pro-U.S. political organizations abroad.  The decision to do otherwise here reflects a broader logic of the U.S. mission:  Democracy first; liberalism later.

In short, Kaplan implies, America may have spent its blood and treasure help Iraq transform itself into what Fareed Zakaria calls an "illiberal democracy."

I can attest to much of what Kaplan says.  Human rights activists I spoke to in Baghdad and Basra frequently complained that the CPA offered them no funding, despite their many requests for aid.  Others--the Communists in particular--simply viewed the administration as favoring Iraqi exiles and corrupt religious and tribal leaders ensconced in the old Governing Council.   This, in turn, fueled suspicions among "scientific" Iraqis that the U.S. only wanted to establish a pliable Iraqi government that would offer access to the oil spigot. 

Still, as much as I respected and admired Iraqi liberals, I can't fully agree that the U.S. should have poured millions of dollars into financing their political ambitions.  To begin with, our military presence enraged thousands of Sunnis:  did we want our economic aid to alienate the Shia, especially their religious establishment--and, most importantly, Ayatollah Sistani?  We may not have "won" the Shia hearts and minds in this war, but we didn't exactly lose them, either.  By acting as a rival--or even an adversary--to Sistani's influence over his followers, we might have hardened the Hawza's line toward the U.S., and strengthened the hand of rebellious clerics such a Moqtada al-Sadr. 

But let us take Kaplan's prescription for liberalism to its logical conclusion.  The U.S., after establishing peace and security, funds "scientific" parties which then out-poll the Shia and Sunni religious parties in the January 30 elections to form a government.  What then?  Iraq has a regime that every nation in the Middle East and Europe, as well as conservative religious groups from Najaf to Detroit, immediately stamp as an extension of American foreign and military policy.  The suspicions of U.S. hegemony over oil-rich Muslim states takes on even more valence, intensifying anti-American sentiment and providing the world additional excuses not to assist the Iraqi people.

While the U.S. did make serious errors mistakes in liberating Iraq--too few troops being the worst--another, perhaps more important reason, exists for parlous state of liberalism in the country:  Iraqis aren't liberal.  This is a difficult matter for the neo-liberals of the New Republic to accept.  (In an editorial Peter Beinhart once criticized me for suggesting that rank-and-file Shia were "ungovernable" because of their religious fanaticism.  We shall see...)  Kaplan makes a pass at the point, noting that Iraqis are

burdened by the fact that, in a country with no liberal tradition, liberalism itself is a foreign concept.  The peculiarities of Arab culture, decades of life under Saddam Hussein, ethnic and religious rivalries--all have been offered by way of explaining why it is that, as State Department Iraq expert Alina Romanowski has put it, "Iraq present as unpromising a breeding ground for democracy as any in the world."

In many ways, Kaplan understates the case.  As I point out in In the Red Zone, Iraqis have a poor concept of the give-and-take and compromises that form democracy.  Worse, their sense of national identity is weak--for at least a quarter century Iraq was Saddam, and Saddam was Iraq; when the tyrant fell, a void opened in the national psyche.  To the surprise of we neo-cons, America found itself with a prostrate country not simply in need of "nation building"--but "identity building."  "The Iraqi mentality today is too much like the old Saddam mentality," said Haana Edwar, director of a Baghdad women's center.  "It is an agressive, broken mentality, unfit for democracy." 

Moreover, Kaplan overstates the practical capabilities of liberal Iraqis.  Even with all the funding in the world, I doubt that many of the "scientific" leaders I met could do more than rent out more spacious headquarters, print fancier programs or hire  larger fleets of cars.  As Juliani Yussef, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahkbar newspaper in Basra told me, "Secular parties have big membership lists, but few programs."

Furthermore, aside from the Communists, liberals simply had no idea of grassroots organizing.  How could they?  Iraqi society has no grassroots.   There are few voluntary associations or clubs; labor unions are practically non-existent; political parties only in their infancy--the whole society is an "armed camp," as a Kurdish man once told me.  "Saddam turned the Iraqi people in a bomb," a Baghdad cabbie said to me once.  "When he was removed, we exploded." 

Like it or not, Shia Islam is the best, or at least most effective, organizing principle currently operative in Iraq.  This is why we should thank Allah that a man with the sagacity and maturity of Ayatollah Sistani happen to dominate Najaf at the time of our invasion.  Make no mistake:  this man is no liberal, no Western-style advocate of individual rights--he is a conservative.  But he is no tyrant either, and he understands that Islam is not the solution to all the problems Iraq now faces. 

As for Basra, yes the situation there is unpleasant:  religious parties hold sway, women are forced to wear black hejab, Christians are increasingly unwelcome.  But to extrapolate conditions there throughout the country is a mistake.  Iraq is too diverse, the tradition of secularism too ingrained in the Iraqi people (thanks, in many ways, to Saddam and the Baath Party) and the Kurds too jealous of their secular autonomies for the country to morph into another Iran.  George Bush may not find himself dealing with the kind of new Iraqi leadership he planned for or wished, but that in itself may be a guarantee of sorts for success in Iraq:  no reasonable observer will be able to charge that the new Shia-dominated government in Baghdad is a puppet regime.

Neo-liberals like Kaplan wish America to intervene in Iraq's politics while somehow avoiding the taint of imperialism.  How is that possible?  In his own way, he is like Iraqis I met who demanded that the U.S. fix the infrastructure problems of their nation while simultaneously ending the "occupation."  Both present a no-win situation where America can never do enough, and will always do too much.

UPDATE:  Belmont Club has more thoughts on this subject, via Reuel Marc Gerecht and the Weekly Standard.

EXIT POLLS

What was the voter turn-out in Iraq?  Common Consensus seems to have settled on 57 percent, but as I've been suggesting, critics have plausible grounds to lower the count below 50 percent.  The Daily Kos, exuding more sour grapes than a Tuscan winery, is guiding his readers toward this argument.  Yesterday, he linked to a piece on the Editor & Publisher website by Greg Mitchell, which addresses this issue.  First, Mitchell notes that in his initial statements, Farid Ayar, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq claimed "as many as eight million," which the media (says Mitchell) "quickly translated as 'about eight million,' and then, inevitably, 'eight million.'"

Out of how many voters?  Well, the press has settled on 14 million.  But as Howard Kurtz has noted,

the 14 million figure is the number of registered Iraqis, while turnout is usually calculated using the number of eligible voters.  The number of adults in Iraq is probably closer to 18 million.

At 18 million, then, voter turn-out is around 45 percent.  Not bad, given the campaign of intimidation and coercion unleashed by the anti-Iraqi fascists.  But not the emotionally satisfying "over-50 percent" mark. 

"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baselines on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz asserted.  Then, in an addition that must have warmed Zuniga's heart, Kurtz/Mitchell quoted Democratic strategist Robert Weiner: 

It's an amazing media error, a huge blinder.  I'm sure the Bush administration is thrilled by this spin.

Alright.  Possibly  8 million voters out of maybe 18 million who were eligible.  But wait.  Where do get the figure of 18 million?   Kurtz admitted he took the number based on some "approximations"  by experts.  On the other hand, writing in the New York Sun, Iraqi ex-pat Nibras Kazimi quotes an Iraqi man who believes that the turn-out was actually 80 percent.  Why?

[T]he estimated number of voters is based on the food-ration system. He avows that the numbers of food-ration cards are phony baloney. The system was rife with forgery in the 1990s and there are as many as 1.5 million fake names on these cards. During the sanctions era, many families understandably bribed the officials in charge of food dispensation in order to get more monthly provisions to sell on the black-market and purchase other foods not provided by the state.

In other words, there are less than 18 million--or maybe 14 million--eligible voters in Iraq, which, of course, would raise the turn-out totals.

My own feelings?  With all due respect to Mr. Kazimi, what worries me about the media coverage of the election was what it didn't show.  No, I don't mean the Sunnis.  I mean the millions of Iraqis who live in rural no-name villages, often no more than a collection of a few desolate hovels. The vast majority of these people are illiterate and live under the thumb of some tribal sheik; moreover, they do not dwell near the cities (and the hotels) where media types gather.  Where were these people?  Did they vote?  Where?  And are they counted on ration cards or any other means of measuring the Iraqi population?  One of the failings of reportage from Iraq (including mine, I'm afraid) has been the inability to penetrate into the deeper levels of the country's rural life.  I fear election coverage may have been no different.

VOICES FROM IRAQ

This e-mail is currently making the rounds in cyber-space.  It was written by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Stanger of the 1^st Cavalry Division, and was sent to me by a friend in the Marine Corps.  I present it here without comment

An Incredible Day. 

Today I got to witness first hand a new democracy take its first steps. My day started early....acutely my day started about 4 days ago because we have been going non-stop since then, hence no updates lately. I was up at 5am and my head was pounding and my sinuses were killing me. I was up and out with my team by 5:30am....I had to get at least one cup of coffee in me before I left. The day started slow and we had some small arms fire, 8 rockets shot at us, and we found one IED. The small arms fire and the rockets missed us. The IED was another matter, but we called our bomb guys and they took care of it with their bomb robot. Which, by the way, is their third robot. The first two died in the line of duty. The polls opened at 7am and that when things got interesting. 

The press showed up in droves. It would have been impossible to swing a dead cat and not hit a reporter in our  area of operation today. I met Campbell Brown from NBC.  She was likeable, but you could tell she did not want to be in Baghdad....she was very jumpy and looked a nervous. I guess we were that way when we first got here too but you get used to the shooting. Later, when we were dealing with the IED, a guy from PBS filmed the whole episode and told me that he was shooting a documentary for PBS. He had the camera in my face for about a half an hour while we got set to blow the IED. It is a little weird trying to get rid of a roadside bomb when guy has a camera in your face. I finally got him to leave me alone when I told him we were going to blow the bomb in place. Since the bomb was on a bridge there was no where to hide so I put him behind my armored hummer and he stayed put.  We blew the IED and the PBS guy left. 

We had very tight security on the polling sites and all around our area of operation. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers were at every polling site defending them. I have been planning for about 8 days for this mission and it was the largest we have done to date. Infantry, armor, attack helicopters, engineers.... you name it, we had it. The Iraqi government shut down all traffic in the country so the streets were deserted. At about 10am the streets were packed with large crowds of people walking to the polls. We were on edge waiting for more attacks that never came. By about 3pm we could start to let our hair down and talk to the people. The site was amazing.

We dismounted from our vehicles and were instantly mobbed by about 200 kids. The kids were all over the place playing in the streets while their parents voted. The kids walked with us for about 2 miles while we were talking to the adults.  I have never seen anything like it. People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris. Iraqis of all ages wanted to shake our hands and thank us for allowing them to vote. The kids were proud to tell us that their parents voted. Adult after adult wanted to thanks us for making this day happen. When the Iraqis voted they dipped their fingers in indelible purple ink so that polling officials could tell who had already voted. When we walked the streets the Iraqis would hold their purple finger up in the air as a mark of pride. They were very proud of their purple finger. The Iraqis statements to us were all the same; "Thank you for your sacrifices for the Iraqi people", "Thank you for making this day possible" The United States is the true democracy in the world and is the country that makes freedom possible", God blessed the Iraqi people and the United States this day", " We have never known a day like this under Saddam", "This day is like a great feast, a wonderful holiday". I shook more hands today then I have ever in my life. If you missed a hand they would follow for a mile to get a chance to shake and say thanks. It was nothing like we expected or have ever seen. The Iraqi people were strong and brave today. The Iraqis stoic to danger, faced fear, and went out and voted. Then after they voted the Iraqis stayed on the streets to celebrate by singing dancing and trying to shake the hand of any American that they could find. 

Even though today was a great day for Iraq, the Iraqis took their lumps. There were 6 car bombs in Iraq today, 2 of them in Baghdad. One I believe did more for Iraqi moral then any other event I that I have ever witnessed here. A suicide car bomber drove up to a polling site, which was not to far from us, and blew up. The bomb did not kill anybody but the bomber himself. After the bomb went off the Iraqi voters calmly walked out of the polling site and spit on the remains of the suicide bomber. The polling site stayed open and the voting continued. That incident ran all day long on Iraqi TV. It was a beautiful act of defiance for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people stood up for themselves today and stuck a purple finger in the enemy's eye.           

Later in the day I thought about our sacrifices that we have made. I wondered if the three men that my unit has sent home in flag draped coffins was worth what I saw today. I am still not sure if that is the case, but when a grown Iraqi man thank me with tears running down his face it made me feel better about what we have accomplished. 

Scott

MARTYRS' DAY

Explosion of the day of elections

-- official explanation of death on the death certificate of Naim Rahim Yacoubi

The New York Times often serves as a favored target for people irritated by its Overclass condescension, but occasionally it gets things right.  Case in point is yesterday's superb story by Edward Wong headlined "Iraqis Who Died While Daring to Vote Are Mourned as Martyrs."

Wong focuses on some of the nearly 50 "victims of election day violence" whom Iraqis honor as people who gave their lives for democracy.  Writes Wong,

They were policemen who tried to stop suicide bombers from entering polling centers, children who walked with elderly parents to cast votes, or--in the case of Mr. Yacoubi--a fishmonger who, after voting, took tea from his house to electoral workers at the school.

Wong quotes a neighbor of Naim Yacoubi:

All of us talked about the elections.  We were waiting impatiently for this day so we could finally rid ourselves of all our troubles.  Naim was just like any Iraqi who hoped for a better future for Iraq, who wanted stability for Iraq.  We hoped that after the elections, the American forces would withdraw from our country.

After voting at 8:30 a.m., Mr. Yacoubi, "impressed by the dedication of the election workers," returned to the Baghdad voting site with tea.  He had just dropped off the glasses when a suicide bomb exploded.  At Mr. Yacoubi's burial in the holy cemetery of Najaf, a family friend said to Wong,

It's not the man who exploded himself who's a martyr.  He wasn't a true Muslim.  This is the martyr. What religion asks people to blow themselves up?  It's not written in the Koran.

The neighbor added,

This is the courage of Iraqis, and we will change the face of history.  This is our message to the countries of the world, especially those that are still under a dictatorship and want to walk the same road as the Iraqis.

Another martyr was Adil al-Nassar, a forty year old policeman who had joined the service a year ago.  At a voting site in Baghdad he tackled a suicide bomber who had leaped in a line of women.  The bomb exploded, killing Officer Nassar and several other people.  Despite the explosion, voters returned to the site as if nothing had happened.  Said the policeman's father-in-law,

He's a martyr now.  He saved many lives for the greater good.

Words cannot describe the magnificence of this spirit.

Nor can words convey the obscenity of the anti-Iraqi forces.  From the Sydney Morning Herald we learn that one of the "suicide" bombers was in fact a 19 year-old man with Downs Syndrome.  Amar Ahmen Mohammad had the mind of a four-year old, but that didn't stop the courageous sons from strapping explosives onto him and sending toward a Baghdad polling site.  Perhaps misunderstanding his instructions, Mohammad detonated his device early, killing only himself.

He, too, must be numbered among the martyrs of Election Day. 

MESOPOTAMIAN MISCELLANEOUS

UN-enthusiastic

The New York Sun's Benny Avi wrote on January 27 that U.N. officials criticized U.S. troops for helping "Iraqi officials distribute information on the electoral process to Iraqi citizens" and for encouraging them "to participate in Sunday's vote."

Head of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division Carina Perelli said in a press conference that the U.N. officials were

asking, begging military commanders precisely not to do that...the Americans were "overenthusiastic" in trying to help out with these elections.  We have basically been saying they should try to minimize their participation...

Like the U.N. itself, which stationed a grand total of 22 observers in Baghdad.

In response, a Pentagon spokesman told Avi, "There are 150,000 U.S. troops as of the coalition in Iraq, who are there to do a number of things but primary among them is to help the Iraqis hold their own elections."

*

Not a "voter boycott"--"voter supression"

In Baghdad, according to the Financial Times'  Neil MacDonald and Awadh al-Taee, nearly 50 percent of the listed voters in the heavily Sunni neighborhood of al-Ameriya turned out to cast their ballots.  Across a highway from the district is the headquarters of the Muslims Scholars Association, which had called for a "boycott" of the voting. 

Al-Ameriya voters were evidently unswayed by this graffiti message scrawled on the walls of the polling station:

We will kill anyone who goes to the elections.  We will kill you for treason and spying.

Interesting definition of "treason."  In any case, combining insurgent bravado with faith in democracy, one voter proclaimed to the FT: 

I am a suicide voter...We need to have steadfastness as a people...because our country needs a future.

*

Occupational benefits

Although it was written last November, this comment by Jordanian columnist Salameh Nematt bears repeating:

It is outrageous and amazing that the first free and general elections in the history of the Arab nation are to take place in January: in Iraq, under the auspices of American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation.

*

Sadr but wiser

A few months ago, Moqtada al-Sadr issued this fatwa:

The elections aim to separate the Iraqi from his religion.  When people vote for politicians, secularists, those who co-operate with the occupation--they will not think of God.

More to the point, they won't think of Moqtada al-Sadr.  Which is exactly what happened:  yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that in Mookie's stronghold of Sadr City,

turnout so vastly exceeded expectations that workers had to request more ballot boxes.  One polling station planned for an estimated 2,800 voters.  By 9:30 a.m., more than 1,000 people already had shown up.

As I observed yesterday, a Shia marjah's elevation in the clerical ranks is largely determined by the number of people who follow his fatwas.  One of al-Sadr's aims has been to challenge Sistani's leadership of the Hawza, the Shia's Najaf-based religious authority.  The repudiation of his views by the population of his own base is a devastating blow to his prestige and another sign of how firmly Sistani is control of the Shia's clerical leadership.

*

Good paramilitaries?

Also from yesterday's Journal, this rather disturbing news, contextualized in an odd way by writer Greg Jaffe:

The Iraqis' enthusiasm for the elections was perhaps best expressed by the homegrown militias--many formed by Iraqis in just the past few weeks--to secure the polls.

One of those groups, which called itself the Defenders of Baghdad Brigade, appeared out of nowhere about a month ago, setting up camps around Baghdad's Martyrs' Monument...U.S. officials supplied them with rifles, ammunition and body armor.  Less than three weeks later, they were out on Election Day guarding polling sites.

A second militia from the town of Amarah, a Shiite city in southern Iraq, set up shop in early January in Baghdad's old Defense Ministry...

"These groups just started appearing like mushrooms.  In the last month, they have been appearing so quickly that we can barely keep track of them," Lt. Col. Jim Bullion said.  "U.S. military officials say they aren't sure what will happen to these groups after the elections."

Whoa, wait a minute.  Aren't we in the business disarming militias--rather than equipping them?  On whose authority was this done?  Who watched these groups?  What did they do after the elections with their U.S.-issued guns and ammo--turn them back?  I doubt it.  We can guess these mushrooming paramilitaries were Shia in orientation--a sign of what could easily happen if alienation takes root among their people and they decide to take up arms.  No Iraqi government can ever achieve full security until it monopolizes the use of force.  Encouraging paramilitary groups--let along arming them--is not the way to achieve this.

*

Oil slick

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, has issued a damning report accusing the CPA of failing to adequately account for nearly nine billion dollars in oil revenues it gave to Iraqi ministries.  For more of this "Oil-for-God-Knows-What" scandal see my earlier post "Crude Business."

GOING FORWARD

(note:  you can also catch this piece on the Adventures of Chester, where I'm concluding a four-day stint as a guest blogger.  Go there, and if you haven't already, make it a daily habit, like I have.)

As is the wont of things, after the euphoria comes the sobering reminder that a single success does not solve a multitude of problems.  Nowhere is this truer than Iraq.  With the risk of seeing like dreary chunk of Juan Cole in the Christmas stocking of Iraq's elections, let me outline some of the challenges immediately facing the Land Between the Rivers.

The Kurds.  The flashpoint is the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk.  Here, Kurds are vying against Sunni Arabs and their Turkomen allies for control of the oil fields of Baba Gurgur.  Although Kirkuk technically falls outside Kurdistan, the Kurds have long eyed the city as the capital of an independent nation.   When the Iraqi Electoral Commission last month ruled that Kurds displaced by the Baath Party's "Arabization" program could vote in local elections, Arab candidates withdrew.  Turkey, meanwhile, is registering ominous objections to Kurdish maneuvering for autonomy.  Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massud Barzani hardly helped matters when he announced in a recent interview that "an independent Kurdish state is indeed going to be happening."

The Shia.  Of immediate interest is the post-election unity of the victorious Party of Ali.  As the Los Angeles Times' Ashraf Khalil notes, the United Iraqi Alliance fused together by Ayatollah Sistani comprises a number of religious and secular Shia groups, many of which--such as Dawa Islamiyya and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq--are traditional rivals.  As Khalil observes, a splintering of the slate could provide an opportunity to secularists like Ayad Allawi to pick up some dissenting Shia to form a ruling coalition; on the other hand, a collapse of unity risks weakening the prestige of Sistani (the most unifying figure today in Iraqi politics) and alienating Shia from the democratic process. 

Other things to look for:  The fate of Moqtada "Mookie" al-Sadr.  He was a big loser yesterday--especially because his fatwa to boycott the elections was generally ignored.  In the Shia world, one's advancement in influence and power is determined by how many people pay attention to your pronouncements (rather like blogging); he may have slid a ways down the marja totem pole.  Also, keep an eye on Ahmad Chalabi.  While fighting Defense Minister Shaalan over mutual corruption charges and the Arabists in the State Department and CIA, this consummate in-fighter seems posed to play an important role in the new "secular" face of the Shia leadership.  He didn't do much for Iraqi unity last week, however, when he seemed to call for Shia "autonomy" over the oil-rich southern provinces.

The Sunnis.  We'll have to see their turn-out totals, especially in areas not dominated by anti-Iraqi forces.  If it turns out, as I believe true, that Sunnis wanted to vote, but were prevented by fear, the "voter boycott" was in fact "voter suppression."  And this, in turn, could erode the legitimacy of the Muslims Scholar's Association's "leadership"--a positive development.  The MSA's politics of resentment, grievance and non-participation in democracy (with the telling exception of oil-rich Kirkuk) echo the PLO tactics and could doom the Sunnis to similar cycles of despair and violence.  To save their clerical skins, the MSA and their allies will use any sliver of plausibility to decry the elections as illegitimate (especially if voter turn-out results drop below 50 percent).  But even they seem to see less room for maneuvering, as evident in their demands that they have a seat at table when it comes time to hammer out a constitution.  Sunnis, thy name is chutzpah.

The Anti-Iraq forces.  Allah be praised, they were the biggest losers of the day--although there will no doubt be further attacks.  But the political, rhetorical and psychological terrain has changed.  In the past, the homegrown Iraqi militants got a lot of mileage from their claims that they fought a "foreign occupation."  Whatever little merit that argument possessed has vanished with the election:  now the ex-Baathist Saddamites appear in their true light--fascists attempting to overturn a democratic government.  At what temperature does the legitimacy of reactionaries burn?  Fahrenheit 9-11. 

As for the foreign jihadists, Z-Man declared war against the elections and then couldn't stop them.  History--despite what would-be restorers of the Caliphate might say--is not on his side.  The fighting will continue--that's what jihadists do, after all--but the legitimacy of the mujaheddin has been shot by ballots not bullets, and time will bring an end to their nihilistic bloodshed.  This isn't Afghanistan, 1990s, Z-Man, and you're not fighting a doomed dictatorial state.  Something you will no doubt reflect upon when you're sitting in an Iraqi prison, as you will most surely be soon.

The Left.  Hopeless.  Shameful.  History will record that the U.S. could have saved tremendous loss of life and treasure had we liberated Iraqi with more troops and a proper "after-victory" plan.  But the chronicles will also show that America could have saved time, money and--most especially, lives--had the Left contributed its valuable resources to the liberation effort as well.  Imagine if feminists, labor leaders, environmentalists, civil rights activists, artists and the media had joined in the struggle instead of sitting on the sidelines--or worse, assisting the fascists?  Imagine if the clarion cry of freedom and democracy had arisen from a unified progressive front consisting of conservatives and liberals?  Just as we've learned how much succor the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took from the anti-war protesters of the 1960s, we will someday learn how the parochial, small-minded, narrow-souled opposition to the establishment of democracy in Iraq stiffen the fascist backbone of the "insurgency."  But of course, the Michael Moores, Robert Fisks, George Galloways, Ted Kennedys and innumerable Hollywood celebrities and academics of this world will not care--they will always find reporters, voters, fans and tenure committees willing to dull the sting of conscience.

Our soldiers.  Job well done.  But it ain't over till its over.  And it won't be over until Iraq reaches one benchmark:  the government has the monopoly on violence.  In other words, not until an Iraqi army and police force takes the guns away--literally or metaphorically--from the country too-many armed militias can our men and women go home. 

The Iraqi people.  From now on, we will identify the true Iraqi Resistance fighter as an average man or woman brandishing the weapon of a blue-tipped index finger.

Bloggers.  I can't imagine how the liberation of Iraq would have progressed without the hundreds, the thousands, of blogs that cut through the anti-war bias of the MSM.  By giving a voice to people and viewpoints which otherwise would have gone silent, bloggers helped articulate the cause of democracy and civil rights that lies at the base of this conflict.  Which make me wonder:  how would bloggers have affected the course of Vietnam War?

On that note, I will close out my guest appearance on Chester.  I can't thank Josh enough for the opportunity to address you all.  I only hope my contributions added something to your appreciation of the war, the election and the Iraqi people. Now, with a wave of my own blue-tipped fingertips, I shall bid you farewell.